All language subtitles for [English (auto-generated)] How to Build a Personal Brand (Full Course) [DownSub.com]

Right now, you're on one of two paths.

Path one is the forgettable brand. You

post content randomly, hoping that

something's going to stick. People have

no idea who you are or what you do, so

they do not engage, and they definitely

don't buy. Now, path number two is the

intentional brand. This is where you own

what people associate with you, and your

content builds trust and moves people

toward a decision. If you're on path

number one right now, this course is

going to get you onto path number two

and save you years and hundreds of

thousands of dollars worth of mistakes.

And if you have identified that you're

on path number two, odds are you've

probably hit a ceiling that you have not

been able to break through. This course

is going to help you smash through that

ceiling and actually hit the scale that

you've been wanting. This course is not

just theory. It's built from real

execution and my 16 years of experience

in building brands online. So, here's

what we're going to cover. Section one

is branding. Section number two is going

to be content strategy. Section number

three is going to be building your team.

And finally, in section four, we're

going to talk about monetizing your

brand. So, the first section is

branding. And I think that we should

start off with some definitions here so

that we are on the same page and

everything that we discuss moving

forward is from the same understanding.

I define branding as a pairing of

things. I define good branding as an

intentional pairing of relevant things

done consistently and what you get from

that is the byproduct which is brand.

Brand is when the audience inherently

associates those things together. Let's

use the most classic example known to

man. Nike and Michael Jordan. Nike

entered the basketball market and they

wanted to have their audience or

customers associate them with athletic

greatness. specifically within the

basketball industry. So, what did they

do? They intentionally paired themselves

with greatness in basketball. Michael

Jordan. I I can't think of another name

that's more synonymous with victory,

with winning, with greatness. Or take

Gary Vaynerchuk in content. The man

literally wrote a book called Crush It.

I don't even remember when it came out.

I think 2009. And he was talking about

how people are going to make money

talking about the Smurfs on YouTube. The

man is synonymous with content and over

time his actions done repetitively have

led us to draw that association. He has

intentionally paired himself with

content among many other things. Or my

absolute favorite that I always have to

inject at any chance I get,

Harley-Davidson. Harley-Davidson for

many years in their marketing has

intentionally paired themselves with

freedom. And so what is the association

that the customer base draws upon when

they think of Harley-Davidson? Freedom.

The open road, tearing off their suit

and going out and hitting the road. And

so ultimately what we are trying to do

is think of what are the associations

that we want our audience to inherently

draw when they think of our name. And

the beauty of this is it actually makes

it operational for you. All you have to

do is deliberately and intentionally

pair yourself with the association that

you want your audience to make. It takes

all of the woo woo fluffy magic out of

what brand is and it makes it something

that you can actually do. Now,

real quick, my team and I put a lot of

effort into building out this course and

a lot of accompanying worksheets and

playbooks. So, please take advantage of

them. What you're going to notice is at

the bottom of the screen here, we're

going to have little icons that tell you

what sheet and how you can download it.

I would highly encourage you, please

download these sheets and follow along.

Now that we know what brand and branding

are, we need to define what your brand

is. Now, your brand actually exists

whether you define it or not. Your

audience might be defining it for you. I

would rather we be intentional and take

control. The first step in defining your

brand is defining your desired outcome.

I like to work from the end goal and

reverse engineer our way backwards. And

so here is how I actually reverse

engineer our desired outcome to today.

It is called the brand journey

framework. And it's just four simple

questions, but I can't tell you how many

people have told me how impactful this

was and gave them the exact road map of

how to go about building their brand. So

question number one, again, like I said,

we're starting from the end in mind and

working our way back. So what is our

desired outcome? What do we want to have

happen? Question number two is, what do

I have to be known for in order for that

to happen? Question number three is,

what do I have to do in order to be

known for that? Unfortunately, building

a brand isn't just about things that we

say, it's about our actions. And so if

we want to be known for something, in

order to be known for it, we got to do

the to be known for it. And then

finally, the last question takes us to

right now. What do I have to learn in

order to do that? So if I'm going to do

things in order to be known for

something to then get my desired

outcome, well, right now, I might not

know how to do those things. And so this

gives you day one exactly what to do.

You need to learn these specific items

and then you need to do those things and

then you will become known for those

things and then eventually the desired

outcome occurs. If you have clarity on

your outcome, this ensures that every

decision you make along the way lines up

with what you want to have happen. The

majority of people that are building

their brand online that are posting

content, I promise you

99.9% of them have no idea what they're

trying to accomplish with their content,

with their brand. And so what they're

doing is they're wandering aimlessly.

There's an amazing example that I I love

to share from Alice in Wonderland.

There's a moment where Alice comes to a

fork in the road. There's two different

directions she can go. And the cat,

Chester the cat, I believe is his name.

And he's sitting in the tree and she

says, "Which way should I go?" And he

goes, "Well, where are you trying to end

up?" And she says, "I don't know." And

the cat responds with something so

powerful. He says, "Well, then either

way, we'll take you there. If you do not

have a desired outcome that you are

making your decisions off of, you're

going to go somewhere, but it might not

be the place that you want to be. Now,

after you define your desired outcome, I

would argue probably the most important

part of defining your brand is defining

your associations or the associations

that you desire to have. Ask yourself,

what do I want to be associated with?

What do I want the audience to think of

when they hear my name? Here's an

example. Do you want your name to be

tied to business, trustworthiness, or

mental well-being? Everything you create

should reinforce those associations.

This is where intentionality in branding

starts. Everything you create should

reinforce those associations. This right

here is where intentionality in branding

starts. So, a very meta example here is

that I am creating this course and the

content that we're going to be putting

out to intentionally pair Rston, my

consulting firm, with value, with

scaling brands, with understanding

attention, with building brands that not

only scale, but last and build

trustworthiness within their community.

This is literally what I'm doing. I'm

putting together a massive course right

now that is going to outline all of this

and

consistently pair myself with those

attributes that I want you to draw upon

when you hear about Rston Consulting.

So, we're going to continue to create

content like this talking about scaling

your brand. We are intentionally pairing

ourselves with the relevant thing

scaling brands and we're going to do

that consistently through our content.

Now, we just went over what you want to

be associated with. I would argue this

next part is far more important and

something that 99.9% of people

completely ignore, which is what do you

not want to be associated with? A lot of

people make the mistake of assuming that

brand is only about what you want to

have happen. But a lot of what building

a brand and a successful brand is,

especially in today's saturated market

where there's so many people online

talking about the same subject matter as

you, you can stand out by what you

choose not to associate with. This is

ultimately how you protect your brand.

This is how you keep it from deliluding

and being misinterpreted. Think of how

many people you see online whose

reputation probably has nothing to do

with what they wanted or what their

desire was. often times that is a

byproduct of not being intentional with

what they are not going to associate

with. If you don't actively shape your

associations, your audience is going to

do it for you. Now, this next little

example and explanation here is going to

get a little technical. So, I'm actually

going to read off of the screen to the

right of the camera right now um so that

I don't mess this up because I think

it's really important and I want to make

sure that we go through this exactly how

I meant to. If we believe that branding

is a pairing of things and that good

branding is an intentional pairing of

relevant things done consistently and

that that then creates brand which is

when the audience inherently associates

those things together then we're on the

same page of what brand and branding is.

But what you'll notice is intentional is

not a good or bad statement. Intentional

doesn't mean right or good. Meaning, you

could be intentional with pairing your

brand, but with the wrong things done

consistently. Unfortunately, what this

ends up leading to is the audience

drawing the association between your

brand and those wrong things. Here's an

example that I have to give a qualifier

for. I have some pretty strong views and

opinions on some of the online creators

in the business education space. All

love and respect to everyone. Everyone

can do their own thing. This is Caleb

Rston's individual opinion. Strongly

believed, loosely held. There are some

very scammy, sketchy in

the online education space. They are

untrustworthy and they make content

trying to ladder up to selling some

course online. If you choose to

consistently appear in content with

them, whether it's them inviting you on

their podcast or you guys doing a collab

video together, if you do that

consistently, aka you intentionally pair

yourself with the scam artist online,

the untrustworthy character, the snake

oil salesman, guess what happens if you

do that consistently? Your audience will

start to inherently associate you with

that crowd. Is that good for trust? No,

not at all. In fact, this is some of the

biggest problems that you see with a lot

of creators in the business education

space right now. There are a lot of

individuals that actually have a lot of

value and a lot of good to add into the

world and education and able to

literally show people a whole new way to

approach their business, their career.

But the problem is is they go on all

these podcasts with these

individuals that I cannot trust. And by

doing that enough times, I no longer

feel that I can trust that individual.

So, as much as you want to pair yourself

with the right things,

please, please be diligent about what

you choose not to associate with. If you

get a bad feeling in your gut, if you

don't think that it's the right move,

it's not worth the exposure. I'm going

to open up the kimono here for a second.

I have people right now, not a lot

because I'm not that interesting, but I

have a couple of people that have been

asking me to come on to their podcast.

And so far, I've said yes to everyone,

but there are some individuals out there

that I know will probably eventually

reach out and ask me to come on the

show. Now, if they have that kind of a

brand, I will choose to not go on the

show, even if it's the biggest audience

that I could get in front of because

ultimately awareness is not worth the

trade. What are those people going to be

aware of? They're going to be aware of

you in light of that association. All

right, we've defined our brand. So now

we need to position it. Now your goal

isn't to just blend in. You actually

want to find what is missing in your

industry and own that gap. So it might

be the information that you have. It

might be the philosophy you have around

a certain subject matter like branding

for example. Or it might be your

personality and your unique take on the

same information. You might just be able

to reach a whole different audience that

wasn't able to connect with some of the

other creators in that space.

Ultimately, what you are looking for is

the gap of what is missing and then you

fill it. Now, how do you go about

finding out what is missing or how do

you own that gap? Well, ask yourself

these two questions. What are the people

that are currently creating content in

the space that I'm wanting to occupy?

What are they saying that I disagree

with? How can I take what has been

taught for years or shared for years and

bring a fresh perspective to the table?

Here's a really good example. If

everyone in your industry is focusing on

going viral and getting lots of views

and and always doing that, maybe leaning

into building a long-term trustbuilt

brand will stand out. That's what I'm

trying to do here, right? A lot of my

counterparts who I love and respect,

they emphasize virality and getting

views and there's a lot of benefit to

that. But where I'm coming in and kind

of filling the gap is there's not a lot

of people online talking, especially in

the form of free content like this in a

way that shares with you how to build a

brand that lasts. If you just emphasize

views, for example, the moment the

algorithm changes, nobody's going and

searching for your name. On the flip

side, if you build a brand that has

trustworthiness and deposits a lot of

goodwill into the marketplace, the

moment the algorithm changes, your

audience will be searching for you. And

so that is a prime example of me

contrasting myself with the others in

the industry. That's me noticing a gap

where nobody's talking about this or

very few, and me wanting to fill it, not

only with my unique perspectives and

philosophies, my experience doing this

for 16 years, but also maybe a unique

and quirky personality that some people

will really hate and then a tiny few of

you might actually resonate with. Now,

the other way to bring a fresh

perspective is to share your story. So,

what I would encourage you to look at is

what is different about your story than

everybody else's. Now the the obvious

answer is everybody's story is

different, right? But what is it that

makes you uniquely you? That you can

present all of your information, your

beliefs through that lens. Ultimately,

your story is your brand's secret

weapon. This is what makes you unique

and makes you stand out from everybody

else in the crowd. Nobody else has the

same come-up story or origin story that

you do. An exercise to help you do this

is actually to list out pivotal moments

in your story, in your life, challenges

you've overcome, turning points in your

career, that moment where you got laid

off at your job, and then all of a

sudden ended up finding the next gig,

and it's the greatest thing ever. And

any unique experiences that have shaped

your perspective. For me, working with

Gary Vaynerchuk completely changed my

perspective. I I had a completely

different understanding of what it meant

to create content online with your

audience in mind first rather than

making to make you look good. Share

that in your content. And

ultimately like stories resonate way

more with people than you saying typical

tropes and attributes like hardworking

or innovative or hustling. Nobody gives

a about that. They want to hear the

story behind the hard work. For example,

instead of me being like, I'm a hard

worker, I would tell the story of when I

was editing Gary Ve's trash talk series

and how I would come in on Sunday, and

start editing 12 to 14 hours a day,

Sunday through Thursday, and then I

would arrive in the office at 6:00 a.m.

on Thursday, and I would not leave the

office until 2:00 p.m. on Friday. I'm

not going to do the math for you right

now, but I believe that's about 32 hours

straight. the story and if I went more

into detail would be far more compelling

than me just telling you about working

hard or how I work hard. Another example

is instead of Jeff Bezos talking about

how resourceful he is, tell the story

about how he used a door as his

desk. Nothing will say resourceful more

than telling that story. Share your

stories. That is what your audience is

going to resonate with. Now, for those

of you who have made content online, the

thing that you're probably very aware of

is there's a lot of skepticism. There

are a lot of objections that the

audience has towards your content,

especially if you are in the education

space. Legitimately, the majority of

people watching your content are

thinking the entire time, why would I

trust this? Does this actually work?

Okay, cool. That worked for you, but

does it work for me? How would it work

in this scenario? Have you done this in

multiple different industries? They are

constantly thinking of their objections

to what you have to say. And often times

those objections and that skepticism

appears in the comments. Here's what I

would like you to do. Instead of

allowing that to take place in your

comments, start looking at your comment

section, getting a greater understanding

of the skepticism and objections that

commonly occur within your audience and

start addressing them in the content.

Just like a great VSSL overcomes

objections before a prospect hops on a

sales call, treat your content the same

way. Why would you not try to overcome

the objections that your audience is

going to have? If ultimately your goal

is to educate and change the actions of

your audience after they consume your

content, why would you make it harder

for them to do that? Let's make it

easier by overcoming any objection or

skepticism they're going to have about

what you're saying in the content

itself. If you address the skepticism

and the objections proactively in your

content, what you do is you build more

trust and credibility. When you answer

the questions before they're even asked,

you remove friction, and then it makes

it easier for your audience to actually

change their actions and be educated.

All right, the next one is don't be a

robot. This is something that a

lot of people making content online

really struggle with, and I completely

understand why. There's this weird

object that you're talking into called a

camera and a lens. And it's like this

very freaky ordeal, right? Even right

now, I am doing my best to be a human,

not a robot, right? And bring my

personality into this content rather

than just monotone giving the

information that I want to. And part of

being a human is sharing not only the

wins, but also the losses. Share the

failures that you've had along the way

and the lessons that you learned from

those failures. Think about it. The

friend that you have that's always

sharing how great everything is and how

they just keep winning eventually, one,

they just become kind of

annoying, right? But two, do you really

believe that? Do you really believe that

life is so perfect and that everything

is going exactly their way? No. Imagine

not knowing this individual. So from

afar, your audience is going to be even

more skeptical of you if all you're

doing is sharing all your W's. On the

flip side, if you are vulnerable and you

share your losses, what you will find is

a lot more people will trust you and

connect with you and relate with you. I

actually think that losses are more

relatable than wins. And we can learn a

lot more from losses than maybe we can

learn from wins. And ultimately, if you

share your losses and the lessons

learned from them, you help your

audience potentially, if they choose to

take action, avoid making those same

mistakes. A really good example of this

is someone that I worked for uh several

years ago. When I started with her, her

whole audience thought that she was a

robot and viewed her as not human. She

just came across as like an information,

you know, overload. and she was just

sharing her knowledge which was a lot

but it had no substance or personality

to it. And so when I started working

with her it was my number one goal to

show her human side to take it from just

information just d to like show

personality right and and this

individual she had an amazing

personality. She was hilarious so funny

quirky everything. But you would never

know that just watching the content. In

fact, a lot of people would meet her in

real life and be like, "You're so much

nicer and funnier and than I expected

you to be. I actually kind of expected

you to be a jerk." But like, in no way

was that the case, but you wouldn't know

it from the content she was making. And

so, I really encourage you to do your

best to bring your true self, bring your

whole self into your content. Seriously,

it will make you stand out. There's

nobody else that's actually like you. An

example for sharing your failures is in

my first YouTube video, I share a

failure. I share the story of how one of

my main clients cut my monthly

compensation in half and I had to go and

fire my friends that I had hired. That

was a real shot to my ego and isn't my

favorite thing to share necessarily, but

I think one there's a big lesson that I

shared that is accompanied with that

failure. But also, I think that you guys

watching it probably, if you did see

that video, felt a little bit closer to

me because I appeared more human. That

transparency ultimately builds trust way

faster than somebody who is just

constantly posturing and trying to show

you how great they are. This

next one is actually uh really tough for

a lot of people to do. And I completely

understand why. The point is to listen

to your audience. The hard part or the

difficulty in this is there's a lot of

people that make content that get a

decent amount of hate in their comments.

They get a lot of people that are just

frankly being And what

I would encourage you to do is do your

best to ignore those individuals. And

real quick, just like an anecdote on

this is if you ignore the praise, you

can ignore the hate. If you get really

high off of the praise when people

applaud you in the comments, you're

going to be very vulnerable to being

very depressed when you see the hateful

comments that are tearing you down. But

aside from the hateful comments, the

other comments that you have in your

posts are actually incredible insights

into how you should go about navigating

your brand and the content that you

create. Especially in the early days, I

would encourage you to look at the

individuals that know you, your friends,

co-workers, and any audience that you

may already have. What are they

associating you with? What do they

praise you for? What do they applaud you

for? What do they admire in you and what

keeps them wanting to either continue

hanging out with you, talking to you,

what keeps them coming back? What you

want to do is use this feedback to

refine your positioning and ultimately

know what you can double down on. A

really big example for me is, and this

will sound weird coming out of my mouth,

but please take this with like a humble

tone that I hope I have here. Something

very interesting that I've noticed is

when I hop on Zoom calls with potential

clients or with clients, like 90% of the

calls end with one or more of the

members on the other team mentioning how

much they love my energy and

personality. Again, it feels really

weird for me to say this, so please hear

it correctly, but I started noticing

that and I realized, man, to my point

earlier, I should really make sure that

I bring that same personality and energy

into the content that I make cuz it's

who I am. It's how I actually roll. Like

I I'll make a statement and then I do a

little side comment on. I do that with

all my friends or my family all the

time. I do it on client calls, on

discovery calls, anything. And so if

that is something that people are

resonating with and liking and giving me

real time feedback on that they like

that and enjoy it, why the would I

not involve that in my content? And so

this is using my audience and

technically I wouldn't even call them my

audience, but essentially they are. and

using their feedback to refine how I

present myself in the content, which

ultimately the way I'm going to present

myself is being fully me. Now, another

example is if your audience really

values your practical advice, your no

BS, nononsense, straight to the point

advice, I would really encourage you to

lean into it. If you start seeing a

trend emerging where people are, you

know, adding more filler fluff and, you

know, comfort creators, that's great,

but that's not you. Don't follow a trend

just because it's a trend. Stay true to

who you are and what your audience

appreciates most about what you are

putting out. Another example of

listening to your audience and actually

making a very good change is there was

another client that I had worked with uh

a while back and they fell into this

pattern of honestly getting way too

intense in their content and only

talking about really one subject matter.

They didn't really diversify and they

were just hammering one message over and

over and over that the audience wasn't

resonating with. It wasn't like, you

know, you have your haters that are that

are speaking out and stuff, but

ultimately you're telling your truth.

No, like the majority of the audience

was giving a lot of push back. And so

what this individual did is they

listened to the audience. And by

listening to the audience, they started

to add more context. They didn't change

their belief. They didn't change what

they were saying. They rounded out what

they were saying and gave more context

as to why they were pushing this message

so much. So again, listen to your

audience and let it shape how you

present your ideas, philosophies, and

beliefs. Don't have it change your

beliefs. Don't cater what you're saying

just to the audience. Nobody likes that.

That's what we call a politician. Nobody

wants that. And now the

longanticipated brand story framework.

Your brand story isn't just a before and

after transformation. It's a series of

intentional decisions that shape how

people see you. Now, I tend to believe

that most story frameworks are a little

too rigid to actually be practically

used, especially for many different use

cases. I think that what they end up

doing is they assume that every brand

has some dramatic aha moment, right?

Some big problem that they have to

solve. They assume that the founder

story is the most important one. They

assume that a brand's identity will

never evolve. But great brands aren't

built on a singular moment. They're

built on consistency, distinction, and

connecting with the right audience over

time. So here's a storytelling framework

that I believe works in all cases.

Forget the problem transformation

outcome framework. Okay, I believe that

that is too narrow. Instead, here is the

threepart brand story framework. Number

one is the catalyst. This is why your

brand exists. Every brand, I believe,

starts because something needed to

change. This isn't necessarily always a

struggle. It might be an opportunity or

a gap in the market. For example, and I

don't know this for sure, but I can make

some pretty good assumptions here. I

don't think Phil Knight started Nike

just to be rich. If he did, there's

plenty of other businesses he could have

started that had a higher likelihood of

success. I believe he saw that no other

companies were fulfilling the demand and

meeting the needs that the market had.

In order to determine what your catalyst

is, I would ask yourself these three

questions. What needs to change? What do

you see that others don't? What's that

opportunity that you see so clearly that

nobody else can see? And why do you feel

the need to act on it? If you answer

these three questions, this is your

catalyst for your brand. This is why

your brand exists. Number two is the

core truth. This is what makes you or

your company different than everybody

else in your space. A strong brand

stands out. It doesn't blend in.

Blending in ultimately leads to you

being forgotten. A lot of people

misunderstand this and there's a lot of

them online right now. It doesn't mean

that it's controversy for controversial

sake. That's where you just get the

annoyingly loud people on the internet

that nobody likes. That is not what I'm

saying here. What I am saying is it

means having a core conviction that is

different than everyone else in the

market and not only having that core

conviction but sharing it publicly with

the world. A great example of this is

actually an artist by the name of Russ.

Uh Russ has some very unique views on

how musicians should go about navigating

their career. He is very very strong

about how artists should remain

independent and own the rights to their

music. He believes that this allows them

to have creative control but to also

profit more off of their hard work. What

does he do with that? He shares those

beliefs in the form of his music. He

literally talks about it in his music,

but then also when he does interviews on

podcasts or various news networks, he

reinforces this and shares it heavily.

So to determine your core truth, ask

yourself these three questions. What do

I believe that others do not? What is it

about my personality that stands out?

And think about this. We we talked about

it earlier, but what do people

compliment you on that you can lean

into, that you can double down on? The

example I gave earlier was that people

on Zoom calls, client calls and stuff

like that would mention that they love

my energy and my personality. So what am

I doing in my content in building my

brand? Leaning into that and really

trying to highlight and bring my

somewhat quirky and weird personality

into the content. And number three, why

would the audience care about this? How

does this impact them? What value does

it bring for them? If you answer these

three questions, you'll have your core

truth. And number three, the proof. This

is how you reinforce your identity over

and over and over. I believe that your

brand is not what you say, it's what you

do and prove over and over again. Strong

brands don't just have one past success

story. They have an ongoing pattern of

credibility. Another Gary example is

that he doesn't just talk about volume

of content and the importance of it.

He's proved it for like 15 plus years.

And he reinforces the credibility of

this statement by talking about what

he's done not only for his personal

brand, but all the brands that Vayner

Media works with for the Super Bowl

campaigns, for example. The majority of

their Super Bowl campaigns are

determined off of high volume social

content that they do throughout the year

to test learnings, see what the audience

resonates with, and that's what they run

with on the Super Bowl. And he shares

those stories. So, he is reinforcing the

credibility over and over and over. So,

three questions to ask yourself are, how

does every piece of content I make

reinforce the associations I want people

to make with me? What case studies or

examples can I share that establish my

credibility? And number three, if

someone hears your name, what's the

first thing that they think of? So,

here's a fun example using myself, the

catalyst. I saw brands trying to scale

via just views and impressions, but

struggling to actually build trust with

their audience. It wasn't that the

problem was the content. The problem was

they were lacking clarity on the big

picture strategy and what they wanted to

have happen with their brand. The core

truth is that I believe that a strong

brand is built by the intentional

pairing of relevant things done

consistently, not just getting virality

and getting a ton of views and

impressions. And the proof is that I've

built many different brands that scale

businesses to millions and millions of

dollars in revenue. And I show you how

to do it completely for free via my

content. So you can build your brand

story in three very simple steps. It's

not rocket science. It's not the

complicated that a lot of my

counterparts make it to be so that they

can sell you some course. The

catalyst. What do you see that others do

not? The core truth. What do you believe

that others might not believe? And the

proof. How do you continually reinforce

that identity every single day? Not only

through what you're saying, but through

your actions. If you nail these, your

brand won't just have a story. Your

brand will have loyalty. All right. Now,

for something that a lot of people

struggle with, which is picking your

topic. Like, what are we going to talk

about here? And this is a question that

I get from many people. I've gotten this

question hundreds, if not thousands of

times over the last couple of years. And

there's a lot of different opinions

online about what or how you go about

picking your topics. I have kind of a

nuanced uh belief on this and view on it

and it's one that changes and evolves

over time. I encourage you to start

narrow. I personally believe that early

trust is built off of being great at one

specific thing and talking about that

same specific thing. We all have that

friend who is the best at everything.

And we know that they're not good at any

of it. By them talking all about how

great they are at all these different

subjects and all these different skills.

We pretty much assume that they're not

good at any of them. Contrary to that is

the friend who only talks about

woodworking and how they love carving

this beautiful chair or putting together

this amazing desk for their parents or

whatever. The person who is obsessed

around one thing and speaks about that

at nauseium is the individual who we

believe has credibility and is actually

good at what they're talking about. They

have expertise. A great example of this

is that when Gary started making content

online forever ago, I mean, he was super

early. I think 2006, 2007 on

YouTube, he was the wine guy. He made

content around wine. That's what he knew

super well. Now, at the time, he also

understood business and marketing, but

he didn't talk about that. He built his

base and credibility off of a subject

matter that he was worldclass at. Over

time, he began to expand that, right? He

began to speak to the different business

practices and marketing techniques that

he used to build his dad's wine and

liquor store. But in the beginning, all

of his content for the first several

years on YouTube was wine library TV

where he was tasting and giving reviews

on various wines. And then what you

started to see is he would start to pop

up at South by Southwest and start

talking more about marketing. And then

one day all of a sudden this amazing

speech gets dropped on YouTube

accompanied with a book called Crush It

where he informed everyone of his

beliefs on marketing and utilizing this

new crazy thing called social media. And

so what you see there is Gary started

very narrow and as his experience and

knowledge expanded, so did the subject

matter that he covered in his content.

Again, if you try to talk about

everything in the beginning, you will

dilute the power of what you're speaking

to. So what you're going to notice is

I'm not going to sit here talking about

business tactics. I'm not going to talk

about sales techniques. You're not going

to hear me referencing customer success

techniques and strategies cuz that's not

my wheelhouse. That's not my expertise.

My expertise is on scaling brands and

using organic content strategy to

accomplish that. And so that's what

you're going to hear me talk about. But

what may happen is over the next couple

of years as I gain more experience in

other areas, you might watch my brand

and my subject matter and topics evolve.

Now, the natural question that I imagine

is coming up for you right now is, well,

how do I know when it is the right time

to expand? I feel like maybe right now

I'm at that point. Or on the flip side,

I'm so far from ever expanding. Like, I

want to only talk about this subject

matter for the rest of my life. One, you

should actually know what you're talking

about before you talk about it. So, if

you haven't actually gotten to a point

of excellence and world class, then I

don't know that I would talk about this

new subject matter. I don't I don't

think I would bring it into the table

because what value are you going to be

providing the audience by sharing

something that you don't really know

much about? Now, another thing that you

can look at is once you're known for a

specific topic and you get consistent

engagement and positive feedback from

the audience on that, then you can

consider to start to expand. I would

encourage you to take on adjacent

topics, not something that is completely

different. For example, I'm not going to

be talking about brand strategy and

organic content strategy and then next

week start talking about breath work.

that would be completely offthe-wall and

make no sense, right? So, there would be

too much of a jump for my audience to

trust me on this new subject matter

because there's nothing about what I've

been talking about right now that would

give me credibility for this new subject

matter. to use Gary as the same example

when he was talking about wine and

building the brand and the company

online. By him doing that and gaining

success with the company, it gave him

credibility to speak into marketing and

to share those strategies because he had

demonstrated them in actual use. He put

those strategies that he shared with us

to practice to build his business and

that gave him credibility to jump into

the next section or the next topic in

his career. Another one is look at your

audience and what they're asking for. If

you start noticing that they're asking

for additional information on something

that you don't really cover that much,

but you've maybe hinted at or or has

been displayed in a minor way in your

content, well, maybe that is time for

you to start speaking to that subject

matter. For example, if all of you

watching this started asking me a ton

about my Harley-Davidson and all the

little uh intricacies of all the

upgrades that I've made and the

performance and the handling and how I

go on long road trips, I would gladly

answer those questions. Now, when

thinking about expanding, uh I would

encourage you to do it strategically.

So, let's walk through what that looks

like. A great example of a company that

went about expanding their product line

is Amazon. Amazon started by selling

books, right? And now they sell

obviously a lot more than just books. I

mean, if we look at what I'm wearing

right now, about 3/4 of everything I

have on was purchased off of Amazon. But

ultimately, even though Amazon has

expanded to all these various different

products, they haven't lost their core

identity with books. And I would argue

them acquiring Audible was actually a

big step in re-engaging that audience.

They now have what I probably believe is

the biggest audiobook platform out

there. And so they returned or

reinforced rather than returned, they

reinforced their roots by doing that. So

in expanding, never lose sight of your

core identity and where you started. For

another example, to keep running with

the Gary Vee example, that man continues

to this day to bring back Wine Library

TV on occasions. He still brings wine

into his content here and there. He pays

ode and homage to the OG Gary Vee.

Another great example, similar to Amazon

and Gary of returning to your roots is

Crayola. As of February 2025, when we're

filming this, Crayola announced that

they're bringing back eight discontinued

colors that they had uh taken off the

market. Some of them, you know, as most

recently as 2017, some of them go back

to like 1990. one, bringing it back is a

nostalgic play and that's obviously

going to resonate with a lot of the uh

audience, a lot of the parents honestly

that have kids now like we grew up I

grew up with Crayola and my generation

is of the age we're like we have kids

now and so uh there's definitely a good

play there. But I think what this shows

is a company and a brand can evolve and

and add new product lines, add new

things in and change over time. But I do

believe there is a lot of power in

always holding to your core, to your

root. And that doesn't necessarily mean

that every year, every day, every month,

you have to do that. But it is good and

I think it means a lot to the day one

and OG members or audience or customers

of yours for you to return to that. Uh,

another example actually that that I'll

generalize because a lot of creators do

this is if you're a creator or a

musician, the content or music you were

making day one in the early days, that's

what a lot of your day one fans fell in

love with. And like brands, a lot of

musicians and artists and creators

evolve and they evolve what they create,

right? We all know, I mean, I'm really

big into hardcore music as an example.

And I can't tell you actually a prime

example of this, just thought of right

now, is Knock Loose. In the hardcore

space, Knocked Loose started as a

hardcore band. They had that like grungy

local basement sound, but Knock Loose

has blown the up. And as they

continue to get bigger, they have haters

that call them sellouts and all this

stuff. Well, the cool thing that Knock

Loose does at their shows is they still

play their original tracks. They still

play the gospel and that

slaps every single time. And it allows

for us Day One fans to have that

nostalgic feeling and make sure that we

still feel attached to not only what the

band has evolved into, but where the

band came from. So, a takeaway here for

those of you that have a more

established brand is maybe consider

bringing back like a nostalgic play,

like return to your roots a little bit.

If you had a different content format

style that you used to do, or like the

musician example, if you had an earlier,

more raw sound, maybe consider releasing

a project that taps into that nostalgic

play. Nostalgia is a very big winner

amongst humans. A pro tip on this is to

expand in layers, not leaps. So don't do

anything massive. Every jump, every new

topic you add should really feel natural

to your audience. Again, like the

example I gave earlier, it shouldn't

feel like talking about brand and

organic content strategy and then going

to breath work. Like it should be if I

wanted to get to breath work, I should

probably inch my way over to that point

rather than having just a complete black

and white change. Now, based on the

niche you're in and your desired

associations, that's what's going to

inform the topics that you want to

explore and expand on. Now, a key

reminder in this, and this is where a

lot of you are potentially going to get

hung up, so this is why I'm saying this,

don't think of it as a rule when you're

picking these topics. These are

guidelines that you can follow that make

it easier for you to create content, but

don't make it an absolute rule. As much

as I was saying that it'd be weird for

me to make content around brand organic

content strategy and then immediately

jump to breath work. Sure, that might be

really abrupt and kind of like gnarly

for the audience, but ultimately our

goal is to do this for a long time. And

so if that is something that you do want

to talk about, it. Just jump and do

it. By no means are these rules to

follow. These are guidelines to help you

and make this easier for you. Not

something that you have to overthink

24/7. In fact, I'm going to double down

on this real quick because I think a lot

of people sit down with a brand

strategist or whatever and they build

out these content pillars and then they

always say, "Well, if it doesn't fall

within the content pillar, we can't talk

about it." But here's the thing. When

Trevor and I sat down and identified

what we were going to be talking about

in our content, we didn't necessarily

say Harley-Davidson's, but as you can

probably tell if you're at this point in

the video, I reference Harley a lot. and

I want to make content around my

Harleyies as well. Is it one of my

content pillars? No, it's not. But if I

want to make a video about my Harley,

I'm going to do it because I

enjoy it. And I think that what it does

do is it rounds out my brand and makes

me more interesting. I'm not just

somebody who cares about brand and

organic content. I also love my

motorcycle and love to travel on it. I

love to customize it. This is what will

make you interesting and will cause you

to actually stand out from your

competitors. So the key here is don't be

rigid. Stay flexible. So if you're

trying to figure this out, here's three

questions that might help you. First

question is, what am I genuinely

passionate about discussing? If you

can't tell by now, I'm very passionate

about brand strategy. It probably comes

through in my tone here. That's what you

want to talk about. You want to talk

about something that you're going to

want to talk about because when you do

that passion comes through and people

will connect with it and they will

probably feel like you are more

convicted about what you are saying and

believe you more and actually take

action on what you are saying rather

than just sitting and listening. Number

two is what will resonate with my

audience most right now. So for me, for

example, when I talk about brand

strategy, something that is definitely a

need in the audience that I have is

organic content strategy. I'm going to

talk far less over the next year about

my paid media strategy because that's

something that a lot of people that I

have spoken to over the last 5 years

need less help on. They have more

experience in that. On the contrary, a

lot of people look at organic content on

social as like this like blackbox

magical mysterious thing that they do

not understand. And so that's why a lot

of the content that we're going to put

out this year is going to be around

organic content strategy. And I would

argue number three is the most important

of the three questions. What will cause

my audience to change their actions the

most? Like I've said multiple times in

this video, what you don't want when

you're making educational content is for

people to just be passively consuming

and do nothing about it. You want them

to take action. So, what can I speak to

and how can I speak about it in a way

that makes it easy for my audience to

then listen and take action on what I am

saying. So to make sure that we're not

getting confused here, I just want to

real quick emphasize. I'm not saying

talk about one thing. I don't want you

to talk about just one thing. I want you

to emphasize your one thing. So if we're

looking at a pie, 80% of the pie should

be that one main thing you want to be

known for. But use the other 20% to

round yourself out, to round your

company out, and be more human.

This is how other people will relate to

you. Here's an example. Look at your

significant other or a friend of yours,

right? If you talk about one thing to

them all the time, 24/7, guess what?

They're probably going to hate

you. They're going to get bored of you.

And even more so, you are probably going

to hate you and get bored of yourself.

Sure, it's totally okay to spend 80% of

your time talking about that one thing.

80% of what I'm talking about here is

brand strategy and I'm going to continue

doing that. But the other 20 I am going

to utilize to round me out and make me

more human. I like to call this interest

stacking. Here's a really good example.

All of us probably at one point in our

life started at a normal job and day one

the only thing we have in common with

our co-workers is that we work for this

organization. But as you start to get

more comfortable, you probably tend to

reveal a few more things about yourself,

interests you have. Let's say, for

example, uh you reveal the fact that

you're a huge Kendrick Lamar fan, and

this is during the great Kendrick and

Drake beef. And somebody else on your

team, Sarah, also is like, I love

Kendrick as well. Suddenly, you go from

having one thing in common, we both work

for this company, to having two things

in common. We work for this company and

we both love Kendrick Lamar. What ends

up happening there is you become work

homies, work friends, right? It becomes

more than just co-workers. And as you

start to learn more things that you have

in common with each other, you may go

from being work friends to friends. Even

to the point where once you move on from

the organization, you're still friends.

I think of the same exact principle in

building your brand online. The more

interests and things that you find

interesting that you talk about in your

content, you give your audience more at

bats to connect with you because they're

like, I also like that thing. And how

unique that there's this intersection of

somebody who loves human optimization

and making their body healthier, but

they're also a complete computer science

nerd. That is a very interesting

intersection. So, what you want to do is

actually give your audience more at

bats. So again, spend 80% of your time

talking about the core subject, the core

topic. Ideally, this is something that

is in line with your offers that you

have and drives revenue and

profitability for yourself or your

company. And then the other 20% talk

about your interests. Give your audience

at bats to connect with you. An example

that I love to use for this, whether we

love him or we hate him, is Joe Rogan.

Joe Rogan does an incredible job about

talking about all the different

interests that he has, right? conspiracy

theories, politics, human

optimization, hunting, UFC, comedy. I

mean, the list goes on and on. And so,

if you're interested in one of those

things, you might be interested in his

podcast. If you're interested in two,

three, or four of those things, you're

probably a super fan. The only

way people would know that they are a

super fan or become a super fan though

is if he talks about those things. If he

just stuck to MMA and comedy, there'd be

far less at bats for his audience to

become

obsessed. All right, we are on to

content. So, we've covered branding and

what brand is and we've gone pretty

in-depth on that. And that is laying the

groundwork and giving us the direction

that we are now going to take with our

content. I like to think of it as we've

established our brand and now content is

what we will do to amplify the brand.

And one thing I want to give you as kind

of a qualifier or a statement upfront

that will influence everything that we

talk about from here on out is that I

like to build a content strategy in the

same way that a great personal trainer

designs a great training program for

their clients. A great example is right

now I am gonna start getting back into

lifting and if I were to go into the gym

and immediately start working on Ronnie

Coleman's training routine, well, I'd be

I would probably injure myself

and I definitely wouldn't stick with it.

And so, every good personal trainer

knows that the best fitness routine or

best training routine is one that you

are going to stick with for a long time.

We get the most results the longer we

stick with it. Content is the exact same

way. A lot of people make the mistake of

trying to do what Mr. Beast does or what

Gary Vee does or what all these

different creators online that you see

are doing. Some of them go really high

volume. Some of them go extremely high

production. That is a great goal to

aspire to, but do not start off that

way. You will burn out quick and

you won't stick with it. And so

everything that we design and we talk

about, I want you to take and determine

what do I feel like I can actually

consistently stick with so that I get

the results I'm looking for. So with

that in mind, we are now going to start

by choosing our content medium. This is

the type of content, the style of

content that you are going to emphasize.

Now, I want to be very clear before we

go into it. I think you should do all of

these, but what I want you to determine

is what is going to be your 80%. What

are you going to lean into the most?

Picking the right content medium is

about playing to your strengths while

ensuring long-term sustainability. You

want to be able to do this for a very

long time, like I said at the top. So,

we have four different mediums that

we're going to be discussing here. We

have written content, we have video

content, audio content, and

graphic/design content. And so, we're

going to start with written content

first. Now, written typically is best

for LinkedIn, uh, Twitter X, whatever

you want to call it, Facebook, email,

newsletters, ebooks, articles, those

kinds of things. Honestly, the the best

version of this is somebody who feels

they are capable of taking high value

information, maybe even really dense

information and concepts and being able

to articulate it in a written format

that is concise and high value per

sentence. When I'm thinking about video

content, I'm thinking about value per

second. I would like to think about

value per word or value per sentence.

When it's coming to written, it's

February 2025 when we're filming this.

Right now, LinkedIn is, in my opinion,

the hottest platform to be on. Whether

you are an entrepreneur, a creator, a

musician, an artist, whatever you are,

LinkedIn is actually the platform that

is super underrated because everyone

assumes it's just business people

talking about their careers, but it's

not. We're at the point now where the

homie is posting a photo of him

and his family in the minivan going on a

road trip and then the next post is some

career update. And so we're actually at

the point now where LinkedIn is no

longer just a resume and job status

update psych. It is a social media

platform, however you want to call it,

interest media, social media, whatever.

it is now getting to the point where it

has matured and so people are behaving

the way that they used to on Facebook

back in like 2013 2014 and the beauty of

it is right now if you comment on

somebody's post all of their connections

see it and so it's actually got true

virality and I'm emphasizing this right

now we'll touch on LinkedIn a lot more

later but written content is

murdering on LinkedIn if you understand

how to package and format your written

post if you get the hook Right? It's

incredible right now. And so, uh, if you

feel you have the skill set to do

written, well, this is a great moment in

time for you. Now, if you're wondering

if this is going to be a good medium for

you to pick, well, here's a couple of

questions that you can ask yourself. Do

you enjoy sitting down and writing or

even journaling? Are you already doing

this? Right? Like, do you have a habit

of every morning or every night before

you go to bed, you're already

journaling? Well, you might already have

maybe 70% of the skills required and

also you might have 100% of the interest

in the medium required to do it. A

really crucial question that I think a

lot of people don't ask themselves and

never evaluate the written content off

of is, can you write this down, this

concept, and have it make sense without

saying it out loud? Some of the worst

LinkedIn posts, you can tell they're bad

because the person who wrote it has to

explain what they're saying in the

written. If you have to explain it or

add commentary, it is not a good post

and you should throw it in the trash.

And then once you have a post written or

an article written, do you like the idea

of refining it, editing it, reviewing

it? I'll tell you, when I work on a

LinkedIn post, I probably do about 10

different versions minimum of it where I

reread it, write it. I mean, I just go

back and forth, back and forth on it.

And so I think something very similar to

what we'll talk about here in uh video

content as an editor, you have to be

comfortable watching the same moment

hundreds of times, right? Every editor

watching heard that big time. Well, it's

the same with editing written content.

And so you need to be comfortable with

doing that. That's how you can evaluate

whether or not written content is going

to be a good medium for you to

emphasize. The next one is video

content. Video content is the highest

leverage medium that you can engage in.

With video, you get the main video that

you filmed. Let's say it's a long form

like this. Well, we can also pull short

form clips from it. We can also extract

the audio and make that a podcast. We

can also take the transcript and then

take little quotes out of the transcript

that were punchy or piffy and put those

out on threads, Twitter, uh, Facebook

status update as an image with the copy

on it. There's a lot you can do. You can

then take the transcript and use it as

your starting point to write LinkedIn

posts if you want or articles or a

newsletter. So video is the highest

leverage because you put the effort of

filming this and then you're able to

redistribute or repurpose that content

for so many different mediums for so

many different platforms. But like I

said at the top, if you right now

watching this shudder at the idea of

being on camera and it sounds like

awful, well, I would encourage

you don't do it yet. Again, we want to

be doing this for a very, very long

time. And so, we want to create a system

that we enjoy and we look forward to,

not something that we dread and get

anxiety when we see it on the calendar.

Now, video content includes everything,

right? This is YouTube long form,

YouTube short form, Tik Tok, Instagram,

LinkedIn video tab, Facebook reels,

Spotify video. Now, like everything is

pretty much pushing video these days.

And so again, not only are you able to

repurpose it in so many ways, but you're

able to feed so many different platforms

the type of content or the medium of

content that they are asking for. Now,

if you're wondering who is video best

for, well, honestly, it's really if you

feel comfortable being in front of the

camera, if you feel like you have the

ability to articulate fairly clearly, I

mean, look at me. I'm not necessarily

the best on camera or anything, but like

that's what we're doing here. So, if you

feel that or you're not feeling like

you're an absolute natural at it, but

you're willing to improve and work on it

in real time in public like myself, then

okay, cool. I would highly encourage you

to take on video, you get so much more

out of it. One thing that I left out is

you can also extract stills from the

video. So, you can also use those for

social posts. I mean, the amount that

you can get for the amount you put in is

limitless. Couple of questions

that you can ask yourself when

evaluating if video is your medium are,

are you comfortable on camera or are you

at least willing to try and improve in

public over time? Can you handle uh

negative feedback from people calling

out your lack of abilities to articulate

or uh be entertaining on camera? If so,

do it. Do you get excited about

visuals and grabbing attention? Okay,

video is probably a good one for you. If

not, maybe it's down the road. And the

last question is, can you speak

concisely without rambling? Or again, if

you can't, but you're comfortable

learning on the job, learning in public,

then okay, cool. Let's tackle it. Let's

do it. The reason why we have this last

question is because one of the things

that I've noticed in a lot of talent

that I filmed with over the years is

that when you are extremely

knowledgeable on a subject matter,

something happens when you start talking

about it. I call it bunny brain. I get

it all the time. I start saying

something and then my brain fires off

this next idea and it's like this little

rabbit trail that I end up following and

it can cause you to ramble and it can

cause you to veer off topic. And if you

find yourself doing that, that is not

necessarily a reason to not do video

content. That just means you need to

have a better editor that can help make

sure that the content stays focused.

Now, the next one is audio content. And

this is mainly podcast. That's really

what I would want you to think about

when you're thinking about audio

content. And really, it's exactly the

same as video except for you remove the

discomfort of staring into this lens,

this eternal black abyss that you just

have no idea what the reaction is on the

other side. Because the majority of you

don't have an amazing cameraman behind

it like Trevor who is nodding and giving

me affirmation that what I'm saying is

good. So, it is freaky to sit in

front of a camera, stare into the lens,

and talk. It's a lot easier to just have

a mic in front of you and just riff. And

so I would recommend if the idea of

video is exciting and terrifying at the

same time, maybe consider for a period

of time starting with a podcast. And

what I have found is when people do

this, they very quickly realize, oh, I

might be able to do this video thing.

It's not that bad making content after

all. And so it allows you to see

yourself in a very similar scenario and

recognize that it's not that terrifying,

not that freaky, it's actually very high

reward. Maybe I could do the same thing

with video. So if video was something

that seemed interesting to you, but you

get a lot of anxiety and fear that pops

up in your mind and your body when you

think about it, then I would strongly

consider starting with a podcast. Three

questions to ask yourself here are, do

you feel confident speaking without a

visual element? If you decide to do a

podcast, that's amazing. What we are

missing is a sensory input. There is no

visuals for the viewer to be able to

help understand what you are saying. And

so, if you're explaining a really

in-depth complicated concept, you have

no visual aid to help illustrate what

you are saying. And so you have to use

your words to be able to articulate and

paint the picture for your audience.

This is more difficult. And so it's not

like podcasting is just easier than

video. I think a lot of people

actually underestimate what goes into a

top podcast. They think, well, I mean,

it doesn't require any visuals, so that

makes it a lot easier. But that means

that your descriptions and the way you

articulate your information has to be

even more clear. The next question is,

do you enjoy deeper conversations or

deeper dives into one specific subject?

I find that I prefer longer form

podcasts personally and I think that if

you look at the top charts, yes, there

are short episodes and and shows that

don't do like hour plus long podcasts,

but I would say the majority of the top

100 are a little bit longer than 20

minutes, for example. And so if you feel

comfortable being able to go deep on a

subject matter for that long, I think

this would be a great medium for you.

And the last one is, does your voice

have enough energy and clarity to keep

people engaged? A lot of people would

hear this and think, well, I don't have

that interesting sounding of a voice.

Well, I disagree. I think one

the cadence in which you speak. If

you've noticed sometimes when I talk I

talk really fast then I slow down. I

talk louder and then I bring it down.

I'm always trying to emphasize certain

things. And so when you go on a fast

pattern and then slow down, for example,

it allows the audience to understand

you're trying to emphasize something.

It's a pattern interrupt. So there's a

lot of different techniques. There's a

million creators on YouTube here that

can show you how to be more engaging

with how you communicate. But I actually

want to take a slightly different

approach to this. Throughout this

course, I've mentioned kind of my life

philosophy, which is taking whatever is

given to you and using it as your

advantage, even if it was viewed as a

disadvantage by most people. If you have

a monotone voice, I would actually lean

into that and I would make that your

bit. Again, what a lot of people would

view as a disadvantage or a weakness, I

think you can make that your thing.

Honestly, some of my favorite podcasts

and comedians are very monotone and

sarcastic, and I think that that makes

for a very interesting show. So, again,

whatever you see right now as the reason

why you shouldn't do it, I would argue

is probably the very reason why you

should do it. Now, the last medium is

visual/graphic content. What this looks

like is infographics, carousels, PDFs

that you upload to LinkedIn as a

carousel. That's kind of the hack there.

Or anything that is

designheavy. Now, a lot of people are

going to hear this and think, "Well,

that's just for designers. I'm not I'm

not a designer." Well, one, there's a

million tools out there that can

take a complete novice with design and

make them look like, you know, fairly

intermediate. There's Canva, there's

Figma, there's all these Adobe programs

with AI and how it's evolving right now.

I mean, we're almost at the point where

like, you know, my grandma could

design a really dope carousel for

Instagram. Like, it's not that

difficult. Okay, the real thing here is

it's not necessarily you designing it.

You might have a designer that you work

with. It doesn't always have to be you

implementing it, but I think a lot of

people that are going to resonate with

this are individuals who don't like

video content, but want to be able to

explain and articulate their thoughts

utilizing not just words, but visuals.

Something that's working really well

right now in February 2025 on Instagram

is carousels. Carousels are

murdering. And I think the simpler the

better. And this is where you compare a

visual and written word. So instead of

just having to explain things through a

blog post or a LinkedIn post, you have

two different ways to be able to explain

the concept. Three questions to ask

yourself uh if you're considering visual

or graphic content, are you good at or

curious about tools like I mentioned,

Canva, Adobe, Figma, any of those?

Number two, can you simplify complex

concepts into a visual? Tiny little side

note, an amazing example of this is an

Instagram account. I believe it's called

Visualize Value. This individual,

whoever they are, I'm I don't know them,

does an amazing job of taking pretty

highlevel complex concepts and making

them into unbelievably simple and very

easy to understand visuals. And I think

the audience really appreciates the way

that they are able to do that. And

third, uh, do you enjoy the process of

making content look great, looking

polished? This is not necessary. Uh, you

could literally draw on a

piece of paper, take a photo of it, and

upload it. That's actually, as a side

note, something that is currently

working really well online is drawing

something or creating something physical

in the real world, taking a photo of it,

and uploading it. You can do whatever

you want here. But if you do have a a

love for refining visuals, this might be

an interesting medium for you to

explore. All right, so we've chosen our

medium or mediums that we feel

comfortable creating in. Now, some of

you might choose all four of those.

That's what I'm doing. I highly

encourage it. If you feel like you have

either the team around you, bandwidth,

or skill set, or ideally all three, then

yeah, by all means, use all four of

them. I just wanted to give you the

opportunity to choose one of them if the

idea of doing all four feels

overwhelming in the beginning because

again, we're not trying to jump to

Ronnie Coleman's training routine. We're

not trying to jump to Mr. Beast's

content output, okay? We're trying to do

one thing at a time to start to gain

momentum and stick with this for a long

time. So, now that we've picked our

medium or mediums, it's time to choose

our platforms. What I recommend people

do is prioritize two to three platforms.

I don't want you trying to crush across

all the different platforms. I know a

lot of people out there talk about post

everywhere, post all the time, and

that's a strategy and that's fine. I

would actually discourage you from doing

that. I think that you gain a lot more

by picking, let's say, two platforms

that you're going to learn heavily and

really emphasize original content for

making content specific for that

platform. More on that in a little bit.

The reason why I say two or three rather

than one is you want to avoid single

channel, single platform risk. Here's a

prime example that we just recently went

through. Again, we're filming this in

February 2025. Just a month ago, we had

this wonderful 12-h hour period where

Tik Tok completely disappeared in the

US. Nobody could download it. They

couldn't access it or anything. Guess

what happened? Complete terror. Everyone

was freaking the out, or I should

say everyone whose business or income

was tied solely to Tik Tok. And more

than likely, they were the individuals

who found a lot of success on Tik Tok

and then never chose to build on other

platforms to diversify their reach. And

by doing that, they were unbelievably

vulnerable. Now, I'm not saying that I

think that the US government is going to

start like banning all of these apps. I

do not think that. But what I do know is

that algorithms change. The way that

platforms behave and serve your content

to your audience is always changing. I

mean, if you were to look at how many

tweaks Instagram makes to their

algorithm and the way that content is

served, it's insane. And the real real

is that it's changing all the time for

different people. You and I are getting

different updates at different times.

You have features available to you that

I do not have and vice versa. And so, I

really encourage you, don't try and post

on all the different platforms. What I

would encourage you to do though is make

sure that you aren't tied to one single

platform. Now, what I do like to do is

uh I'm a Lord of the Rings nerd, so I

like this analogy. I like the Eye of

Sauron approach. I do like to of my two

or three that I'm prioritizing, put more

emphasis or more priority and resources

towards one at a time, but I try to

rotate between, let's say I pick three,

I try to rotate between those three. And

so I think of the other two on

maintenance mode while I'm focused on

YouTube, let's say. And then maybe I get

YouTube into maintenance mode and I move

over to LinkedIn. Now, how am I going

about this? Because we're at a very wild

time in my life where I am starting to

create content. As you can tell right

now, this is the first time in my life

where I have started to make consistent

content for myself, not for the talent

I'm working with. And so if you were to

look at my social media profiles right

now, you would probably see that

YouTube, Tik Tok, X, Threads, all these

different platforms, I have less than

like 4,000 followers on all of them.

Most of them less than 2,000. And then

on Instagram, I have like 68,000

followers. And so if you were assuming

that I would start on Instagram, that's

a very fair assumption. But actually,

what I've done is I've picked four

platforms that I'm going to prioritize.

Now, I am recommending that you do two

or three. I've been in this game for 16

years. So, there's a little bit of a

discrepancy there. I want to make sure

that that's very clear. Do more of what

I say in this, not as much of what I do.

So, what I actually did is when we first

started making content, I started with

LinkedIn. And the reason why is because

I believed that the majority of my

potential clients were on LinkedIn more

than Instagram. I also felt more

comfortable with LinkedIn and Instagram.

And so, those were the two platforms I

started with. So, we started on

LinkedIn, made a couple posts, and then

we did a post on Instagram. And I would

encourage you to do the same. Start

where you feel comfortable. A lot of

people really push the whole get out of

your comfort zone. No, that

Not in the beginning. In the beginning,

you want to build the habit of doing it.

Like I remember when I was really into

powerlifting, a lot of times when my

buddies wanted to get into lifting and

were trying to figure out how, I would

tell them, go to the gym for 10

minutes 5 days a week. If you just build

the habit of driving to the gym, you're

going to do it. That's usually

the issue. And it's the same here. Build

the habit of making and posting your

content. Make it as easy as possible.

Now, what we are going to do is we're

starting to expand. So, like we're doing

right now, we're filming long form

YouTube content. And so, we're going to

expand from just LinkedIn and Instagram

to YouTube and a podcast. And the reason

why I want to do that is I believe that

short form content is amazing to drive

awareness. And I think it's super

powerful and very effective to get brand

recognition. I view long form as the

place where conversion actually happens.

This is where we're able to truly

demonstrate our excellence and

expertise. Okay? So, for you, if you're

watching this and you're considering uh

whether or not to do long form or short

form content, well, short form has a

lower barrier to entry. So, it allows

you to start to get the repetitions in

and like I said earlier, build that

habit. But eventually, I would encourage

you to implement one or two long form

styles. either YouTube long form video

or long form podcasts, ideally both like

I'm doing. And the reason why is because

the more time somebody spends with you,

one, the more they're going to see your

expertise and your knowledge, but two,

there is this whole sunk cost fallacy.

And the way it works is the more time

somebody spends with you, the more

willing they are to actually act on an

offer that you present them. For the

very few of you watching this that have

bought a Harley-Davidson or probably any

other vehicle, I just only buy Harley's.

Their finance team has this very

interesting tactic that they do. They

have you fill out all this paperwork and

then they literally, I guarantee they

get the information. They run your

credit. They get all that within

seconds and they make you sit there for

like 10 or 15 minutes just talking to

the sales associate. Then what they do

is they take you on a tour through the

whole dealership. And all they're trying

to do is get you to invest more time in

the dealership so that you feel like,

well, I don't want to waste my time now.

I might as well do this transaction.

There's obviously a lot more that goes

into it. But I view long form content

the same. The more time your audience

spends with you, the more likely they

are to transact or convert on your

offer. So what is the point here? Start

where you're comfortable. If you're

already active on LinkedIn, Instagram,

YouTube, Tik Tok, wherever, then I would

just use that to start. Again, we want

to build the muscle and the habit of

making and posting content. And I

emphasize posting because a lot of you

make and then it sits on your

photo album on your phone and you never

actually put it out. The next question

that I would ask yourself when trying to

figure out which platform do I feel most

comfortable on is where do you naturally

spend the most of your time? Like if you

spend a lot of time scrolling on Tik

Tok, you probably understand what

content does well on Tik Tok. And if you

go from just doom scrolling to literally

consuming the same but with a more

strategic mindset and thinking, okay,

why did I like watching this video? And

you start taking notes on that, you're

going to keep track of best practices

that then you can start to implement

into your own content. The third

question is where is your audience? Back

to the exercise we did the brand journey

framework, right? We created our desired

outcome and then we reverse engineered

from there to today. Well, based on what

our desired outcome

is, who are we needing to reach in order

for that to occur? And where do we

believe it's a hypothesis that they

exist or they live the most? For me,

we're building a consulting firm where

we work with entrepreneurs, creators,

entertainers to help build their brands.

And a lot of them happen to be on

LinkedIn very actively. And so that's

why we started with LinkedIn as our

platform of choice because it was a

hypothesis of mine that we had more

qualified potential leads existing on

LinkedIn than let's say Instagram for

example. And then the finally I would

ask yourself are they on Tik Tok for

quick engaging content or are they on

YouTube for more long- for deep dives

into one specific subject matter or are

they around on LinkedIn trying

to be one of those thought leaders right

now. Basically, you want to make an

educated guess on where you think your

audience is and then test it, monitor

it. Are you getting actual leads? Are

people reaching out to you inquiring

about what you do? If not, there's two

potential options. One, your content

sucks and nobody gives a Two,

maybe you picked the wrong platform.

Now, once we've determined what medium

we like, what platform we're going to

want to work on, okay, cool. We now have

a good understanding and baseline of

what we are skilled at. Once you realize

that, double the down on it. If you

decided you're going to do video and

written, but man, your video content is

just not performing and your written is

going really well, I would encourage you

not to eliminate video, but reduce the

amount of effort you put towards your

video content and increase the amount

for the written content. There are

special moments in time and when you are

popping on a platform, that is not the

time in my opinion to go about trying to

level up other skill sets. That is the

time where you double down and you pour

gas on the thing that you are

actually good at and can consistently

put out that your audience deems as high

quality and high value. Now, on the flip

side, if you're confident on video and

you feel like you're able to articulate

your thoughts, you're entertaining,

engaging, well, then double down on

either short form or long form video.

Again, it's whatever you feel you are

best at, you should be leaning into that

heavily. And like I said earlier, if you

prefer audio, start a podcast.

you'll eventually, I think, get to a

point where you feel comfortable doing

video and then you're doing a higher

leverage activity. The next thing is

look at your results and don't listen to

your ego. I'm just going to be

unbelievably vulnerable and transparent

here. I have been seeing the footage

from this course and I actually feel

like I look fat as this. I feel

like I've gained weight. I would

encourage you to push past some of that

ego some of those

insecurities. I understand why they're

there. I get it. Trust me. But if you

are gaining traction and getting

engagement in your content and people

are resonating with it, who gives a

how you think you look? More than

likely, people aren't even thinking

about that. Like the real real is I'm

sure none of you even thought of that.

Maybe you did, but probably didn't until

I just said it. And so now I just, you

know, brought that to your attention. If

I allowed my ego to dictate what we did,

we would probably not release any of the

content we've made so far. And so what I

would encourage you to do is look and

track your metrics. Look at the

engagement. Look at the results you're

getting. And stop listening to that

little demon on your shoulder that keeps

telling you how weird your voice sounds,

how fat you look, how tired you look,

how weird you sound, what whatever it

is, whatever that inner up voice

is, that is not what is propelling you

towards your goals. Another thing that I

would really encourage you to focus on

is that a small correct audience that is

engaged is so much more powerful than

having a massive audience of people that

have no idea what the you're doing

and could give a about it. For

example, if you were to look at my

Instagram page, I have 68,000 followers.

Nowadays, that's nothing. But

back when Instagram first started, that

was a lot. But those followers are not

engaged with me. I got them like 10

years ago off of my landscape

photography. And so a lot of you

watching this probably have 500 to a

thousand followers, but those followers

might actually be very engaged in your

subject matter and very interested in

the offer you have. Whereas if you look

at mine, all of them follow me or the

majority of them followed me for Pacific

Northwest landscape photography that I

was doing 10 years ago. And so now I'm

going to have to go through the process

of converting people to my new content

and I'm going to lose a shitload of

people. And so there's so many creators

online that have these massive I know

many people with millions of followers

that make very little off of their

social media content. I also know a lot

of people that have less than 10,000

followers that are making millions of

dollars a year off of their following.

Why? Because those 5,000 people that

follow them are their target audience,

their potential customers. So again,

don't look at your ego of the inflated

numbers, the the big follower count, so

that when your friends see it, they're

really impressed. No, who gives a

about that? You want to make sure that

you are growing and acquiring the

correct audience. So please do not be

discouraged if you don't have hundreds

of thousands or millions of followers.

There are plenty of people out there

with less than 10,000 that are making

more money than you could ever dream of.

Now another thing is you want to track

the performance on the platform. That is

an indicator that you are making content

that the platform prefers and so people

will see it and engage with it. And

ultimately this is probably especially

for the people early on in their

soloreneur or business days or a

creator. This is how people are aware of

your offer. Okay? So it's important for

you to play the game. But what I would

really encourage you to do is actually

pay more attention to conversions. So,

if you are a musician, are more people

streaming your music? If you have a

clothing brand, are more people buying

your hoodies? If you're a video editor,

are more people hiring you for various

gigs? If you're an investor, are more

companies coming to you for investment

opportunities rather than you having to

reach out to them? Because time and time

again, what I have seen people do and

it's a huge mistake is they build their

whole brand and content based on

performing well on Tik Tok, Instagram or

YouTube and they never build it based on

actually converting to sales or to

streams. This is a huge mistake because

unless I have this completely incorrect,

the majority of you probably watching

this aren't just trying to be famous for

famous sake. You're trying to drive

awareness that leads to a desired

outcome. And if you don't optimize

around the desired outcome, what you end

up doing is you're going to waste one,

two, maybe three years and lots of money

and time chasing some vanity metric that

doesn't actually improve your bottom

line. The key here is not to think of it

as one or the other. It's both. You need

to make sure that you are paying close

attention to how you're performing on

the platform so that they can see your

and become aware of what you have

to offer. But then also make sure you

are optimizing your content that leads

to action. I would rather have 30 40%

less likes and views and subscribers or

followers, but have that audience

convert at a higher percentage than have

millions of followers and have a very

low percentage of conversion. That's my

personal preference because again, we're

not making this content here for me to

become famous. That is in no way the

goal at all. I actually really hope that

doesn't ever happen. My goal is purely

to become known with my potential

customers. And that's it. I don't need

everybody to know who I am. And so, make

sure that you are mapping and building

out your strategy and optimizing your

content for the correct thing. All

right. Now, we're going to determine

your posting cadence. This is a big

debate, big question that a lot of

people have. I get it. Honestly, I

probably got this question at

least 300 times in the last year. No

joke. And it's a debate that occurs

heavily online and a lot of different

top creators that you should look up to

have differing opinions here. And so I'm

going to share with you my philosophy

here. Before we dive into the framework

for determining your posting cadence and

then another framework for how to

increase the volume and increase your

cadence, I want to give you my

overarching philosophy on quality versus

quantity. The great debate has existed

probably for the last eight years

online. And I think that a lot of people

that enter this debate don't actually

define what these two things mean and

what they are and what their purpose is.

So quantity is something that a lot of

people have overindexed on. I'll say,

okay, they believe that you post a high

volume of content in order to gain the

most impressions and show up everywhere,

having your face in front of people all

the time. And that's a beautiful

byproduct that occurs from posting a

high volume of content. But I actually

view volume of content as a tool in what

I call the accordion method. The way I

like to think of it is I don't know what

quality is and neither do you. We sit

around ideulating on a piece of content

and we'll say something like this is a

highquality piece and that ultimately is

a subjective opinion. That is you

subjectively saying this is high

quality. But we don't give a about

what you think. We care about what your

audience thinks. Your audience is who

determines what quality is, not you. And

we use volume to acquire that data

quicker. If you were to post 10 videos

over 30 days, okay, that's one video

every 3 days. Cool. If you were to take

the same amount of videos and post them

in a week, you're going to gain insights

faster. And what insights am I talking

about? What your audience is resonating

with. What are they liking more? What

are they commenting on more? what's

getting more views. Those are indicators

of your audience signaling to you, the

creator, hey, I call this higher quality

content. Quality does not have anything

to do with the fancy that we're

trying to do here, the lights, the

camera, right? Like the the set that

you're working on. No, that. That

has nothing to do with quality. Think

about this. Some of the most viral

videos, most viewed and engaged with

videos ever online are filmed at night

in the dark on a cell phone.

Like, they're grainy. You can barely

tell what's going on, right? Quality is

a subjective thing. And because it's

subjective, I would rather have the

audience determine what it is rather

than me pontificating on what I think

quality is. So again, you post high

quantity, high volume content to get the

learnings on what your audience says is

quality and then what I believe you do

is you compress the accordion and that's

when you start to put more effort per

piece of content. We're going to get

into that in a little bit here. I don't

want to spoil the mana right now, but

that's my overarching philosophy and

kind of the the shade the lens that you

can view the rest of this section

through. So now that we understand what

quality and quantity are, we are going

to determine our posting cadence. What I

would encourage you to do is first start

with the highest leverage platform.

Okay, what do I mean by the highest

leverage platform? Well, one, what are

you getting the most results from? Where

are you getting your leads? Where are

you getting the majority of your

engagement? Right? What is performing

well by the platform standards and by

conversion standards? And number two,

what platform allows you to create one

piece of content that then you're able

to repurpose into many different pieces

of content? Typically, what this looks

like is a long form piece of content,

aka this course, right? A YouTube video

is going to provide you so much ability

to be able to, like I said at the top,

clip moments, so you can get shorts, uh,

you're able to pull the transcript, get

quotes, use that transcript to then make

a LinkedIn post. You can extract the

audio for a podcast. You can then pull

stills from the video to use in social

posts. It's a very high leverage medium

and platform. Now, please again, I

really pushed this in the last section

and I'm going to just continue

reinforcing it. If you are tracking

conversions, which you should,

conversions offplatform, if you notice

that there's one or two platforms that

are leading to a lot more conversions

offplatform, please double, triple,

quadruple down on those platforms. On

one of the teams that I was running, we

learned when actually looking at the

data that YouTube was our number one

lead provider, Instagram was number two,

and LinkedIn was number three. But

here's the very interesting thing. That

was by absolute. But if you look at

percentage of audience that is actually

converting, LinkedIn was number one by a

mile, it was a way smaller

audience because it was a platform that

we took on and started really optimizing

for way later than YouTube and

Instagram. So what we realized is we

should allocate far more resources to

LinkedIn. If it has a higher percentage

of qualified leads coming from it, all

we have to do is increase the amount of

impressions we're getting and in theory

that will be the number one platform,

not just by percentage, but by absolute

leads. We discovered this at a time when

LinkedIn was just starting to emerge as

like the next big platform. And so we

actually as a team had kind of devalued

it. We viewed it as an afterthought. It

wasn't our number one priority. But the

moment that we looked at the data, bing

bing bing, track your data. The moment

we did that, we saw massive returns. All

of a sudden, LinkedIn became something

that we were putting. I mean, we were

spending probably 20 $30,000 a month

just on LinkedIn organic content alone.

The next one is actually going further

or deeper on what we started this

section off on, which is volume for

speed and learnings, not just reach. I

encourage you in the early days to

increase whatever volume you think you

need to do right now, increase it. Okay?

And the reason why I said it up top, but

I'm going to reinforce it and emphasize

it again. You want to know what your

audience deems as quality. And you want

to know that as soon as possible. And so

what I would encourage you to do is

increase the frequency in which you

post. A great example of this is a

previous team that I ran. We started our

YouTube efforts by posting three videos

a week. Then we increased it to five.

Now, were these highly optimized YouTube

videos? No. I wouldn't even call them

edited. They were just trimmed. There

was no editing being applied. And there

was definitely no graphics or any

intentionality to how we crafted the

intro, the packaging, nothing. What we

were doing though is not trying to

optimize because we weren't at that

phase yet. We were at the learning

acquisition phase. We were trying to

understand what is the audience

resonating with the most. What are the

questions they're asking? How are they

engaging and behaving with this content?

What this allows you to do is then

determine what they're with and

do more of that. And when I say do more

of that, I don't necessarily mean more

volume. I mean putting more effort per

piece. So let's say you were posting

five YouTube videos a week. That's a

lot. What if you took the effort that

you put and the time and resources you

put into five videos a week into one?

And that one video was based off of the

knowledge and insights that you now have

of what your audience has said to you is

quality. Sounds like you might be

getting some traction and actually start

growing and getting subscribers and

views. It's crazy and it actually

works. Quality is not your

personal preference. Quality is

determined by your audience. Plain and

simple. One of the biggest traps

I see a lot of you making is that you

are making the decision for your

audience. Maybe you have a piece of

content that you've been sitting on and

you think, "Ah, this isn't high quality

enough and you're just not posting it.

You're not putting it out there and

you're making the subjective decision

that this is not worth your audience's

time and they're not going to get value

out of it." But how do you know if you

don't put it out? Especially in the

beginning. I understand mature creators,

you get to a point when you are a

content creator where you do actually be

able like you know this is not going to

hit. Like we can't even post

this. Nobody's going to give a

about this. That does happen. But in the

early days, you don't have a

clue. You don't know anything about your

audience or what they want. You have

your perception of what you think they

want, but more than likely, it's not

that accurate. And so, I encourage you,

stop guessing. Stop making the decision

for them and allow them to tell you what

they want. And the last point in

determining your content cadence or your

upload cadence is avoid the perfect post

trap. I like to say that perfect is the

enemy of posted. If you're struggling to

post

daily, yes, me too. I agree with you.

Most people can't post daily. That is

kind of like an absurd level to just

immediately jump into. And so, I would

encourage you, visit the idea of posting

three times per week. Visit the

idea of posting once a week, once every

other week. Look at what we're doing.

We're probably going to be posting one

long form video on YouTube a month,

maybe every three weeks or so. But we're

putting more effort per

piece rather than high volume. Now,

Caleb, I thought you just said do high

volume in the beginning in order to

learn what the audience resonates with.

Well, I have a little bit of a leg up.

And I'll give you kind of like an

insight into that just so that you

understand that I'm not bullshitting

you. In the last year, I met with over

2,000 businesses and consistently ran

question and answer sessions with them.

I did a roundt session with literally

2,000 business owners. And I know what

the common questions were. I have a very

good pulse on what people are wanting to

hear from me based on what they would

ask me at these Q&As's. I also have been

in the industry for a very long time.

And so, not only do I know what people

are wanting, I also know what they need.

I know what the majority of the industry

is currently saying. Half of these

on YouTube are telling you a lot

of around how to grow your

brand or how to scale your organic

content. and I've seen it long enough

that now I'm at a point where I'm a

little bit fed up and that's why I'm

putting this content out for you. I

would encourage you unless you have

those insights, unless you've met with

2,000 different individuals that map

towards your ideal customer, then I

would probably start with high volume.

But again, if high volume means one post

every other week in the beginning

because that's all you can do, then do

that. whatever you can actually put out

consistently, please start with that.

Don't try and jump to the Ronnie Coleman

method and squat 800 lb when you've

never squatted 135. And the last point

to that is again, stop aiming for

perfection, speed wins. So, for example,

we're filming this course, right? And

we've invested a good amount of money

into this and a lot of effort and we

have been very intentional with all the

little elements, right? like uh the set,

the lighting, uh the framing, the way

that we're shooting this on three

different cameras, the audio, like all

this right? We're trying to be

very cognizant of all of it. But there's

been semis that go by. There's been

police officers that are, you know, woo

woo, the sirens going by. There's all

kinds of And it's not perfect. And

we could stop every single time and we

could potentially even decide this isn't

the right space. Uh maybe we should have

filmed in something that was more uh

audio friendly. But guess what? Perfect

is the enemy of Postit. And so we are

still going to capture this, put it

together, and we are going to post it.

And what have we been doing every night

after we finish filming? We've been

going home and figuring out what we

would do differently and how we're going

to improve on the next version of this.

So, what I would encourage you to do is

instead of letting all the different

problems or issues you see with the

content you're working on right now and

using that as a reason to not post,

that. Post it and take note of what

you're going to do on future pieces that

you make. So, we've determined our

posting cadence and we're at a point now

where we've been doing it

consistently. Congratulations. Good for

you. That's awesome. A lot of

people give up after like a week or two.

And so if you've made it even like 2 or

3 months of posting, you are in the top

1%. So congrats. You're awesome.

I'm proud of you. And I want you to do

more. And by more, I mean I want you to

increase your volume. And here's how

we're going to do it. One, you are going

to leverage a content pillar approach. I

want you to identify your pillar

content. Typically, this is more long

form content. Okay? So, think like a

YouTube video, long form, a deep dive uh

thread. Maybe it's a long form written

post on LinkedIn or it's a newsletter

that you send out to your email list.

Then what you're going to do is you're

going to do what I affectionately call

mining. You're going to go through your

long- form content and mine for the

gold. If it's a newsletter, what you're

looking for is bite-sized chunks that

are self-contained. So, this is a

paragraph that you have in your

newsletter that you could extract and

pull and it would make sense and be

valuable in and of itself without the

other context. You're also probably

going to find maybe a quote or two that

you could pull from that. Okay? And then

you could probably also do a version

where you take the entire newsletter and

you summarize it in call it five or six

sentences. So, a medium form post on

YouTube. If you have a long form YouTube

video, well, what you're going to have

is an editor or editors that go through

and they're mining for the gold. They're

going to find the moments and extract

them that they know are going to perform

well and resonate with your audience.

Typically, you're looking for a powerful

moment that maybe is a slightly

contrarian view or is a nuanced take on

an already discussed subject. For

example, my quality versus quantity

moment. I almost guarantee Trevor is

going to clip that moment and we'll post

it on Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube short,

all that because that's going to be

a moment that will do well for our

audience. Now, this is nothing new. I

like to call it the waterfall

distribution model. But ultimately, I

got to pay homage to the actual man who

came up with this. This is the OG Gary

Vee. He came up with the content

framework and how he extracts thousands

of posts from one long form piece of

content. And he's been doing this since

I want to say like

2015, 2016, right? Like originally it

started with releasing Daily V and then

clipping moments from that and posting

them on Instagram before reals, Tik Tok,

any of that was a thing. And so here's

what I recommend you do. Take your high

value content. Let's use a YouTube video

for example. And what you're going to do

is you are going to break this down into

short form clips. You're going to

extract quotes that you can put out on

threads and X. You're gonna take the

transcript and find a moment that you

can rewrite into a LinkedIn post. You're

gonna then take that LinkedIn post and

post it on Facebook as well. Then one of

the shorts that you clipped from that

YouTube video that you post on

Instagram, use the LinkedIn post as your

caption for that post. Okay? Do you see

how literally in the moment right now,

I'm not looking at notes. I'm literally

coming up with this in the moment

because there is so much that you can

extract from a YouTube long form video.

I haven't even gotten to carousels yet.

Now, what I want you to do is take the

different sections from your YouTube

video and make two carousel slides per

section. Now, you got to simplify. You

can't have a fuckload of text. In fact,

the best practice is to have one very

basic, very easy to understand image

followed by one, two sentences at most

per slide. And so diving even deeper on

it, you want to make sure that the first

two slides in your carousel are taken

from the hook that you made for the

YouTube video. So reinterpret the hook

that you made for the YouTube video into

the carousel opening two slides. The

reason why is because when it's served

immediately, they're seeing the first uh

tile, the first slide. But if they

didn't engage with it, Instagram gives

you a second atbat. How nice of them.

They're going to serve the carousel

again to your followers, but it's going

to be on slide number two. So, you want

to ensure that you have a hook for one

and two. Now, another thing to note is

uh this is not a rule, it's an

observation. Often times, listicles tend

to, at least as of February 2025, they

do better in carousel form. So, if you

have a video that is 10 things I learned

about investing in my 30s, okay, cool.

That's going to be an amazing amazing

carousel. However, if you have like a

really complex deep dive on a subject

matter that is like not in any way made

for the lay listener or viewer, then I

would probably consider maybe just

taking one section of that video and

then expanding that into a carousel

rather than trying to compress an entire

video. So, when I say taking a YouTube

video, please try to stick more towards

listicles when you're doing this.

Otherwise, you're going to want to just

take one section of the YouTube video

and turn that into the carousel. So, in

this example, I couldn't even keep track

of how many different pieces of content

I just listed out. It's easily over 10

pieces of content that we just created

off of one video that you filmed. Insane

amounts of output for what you put in,

aka very high leverage activity. Now,

the next thing that you're going to want

to do is scale by platform, not all at

once. First, we picked our medium. Then,

we picked our platforms. Then, we

determined our posting cadence. Cool.

We've been doing that consistently for a

while now on two or three platforms that

we determined were our highest priority

platforms. Now that I of Sauron approach

that I mentioned earlier is really going

to come in handy. Do not try to scale up

all three or two platforms that you are

emphasizing at once. If you do this, you

won't do any of them well. And so just

like I mentioned with the Sauron

approach, what you're going to do is

let's say for example your top three,

you go LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram. All

right, LinkedIn being number one, we're

going to attack increasing volume there

first. So, what does that look like?

Well, you make sure that YouTube and

Instagram are on maintenance mode.

They're not going to go down, but

they're not going to be growing. That is

not your emphasis right now. You want

those just consistently putting out

enough content to keep the current

audience engaged. If you grow, amazing.

That's a wonderful little surprise, but

that is not our goal. Maintain focus on

LinkedIn. And when we're focusing on

LinkedIn and scaling this up, you have

two different ways to scale it up. In my

opinion, you can either literally

increase the volume of posts you do or

you can increase the amount of effort

you put per post. As of February 2025, I

actually would encourage you instead of

just increasing the volume, I would

start with increasing the amount of

effort you put per post. So let's say

for example, you were posting five times

a week on LinkedIn. I actually would

encourage you as of right now, and this

is way different than what I would have

said a year ago. I'm very much on the

higher effort per piece of content train

right now. And so I would take the

effort you put into five pieces and put

it into three. I am finding you get far

more out of a very, very extensive and

high value piece of content than you do

off of medium value content at a high

volume. Here's an example. There was an

individual that I worked with. They

loved volume and they wanted to post a

minimum of four videos a month on

YouTube. Now, when we did that, those

videos would average around 250,000

views a video, which is really great for

most people, but according to our

standards, that was actually lower than

what we were looking for. Add all of

that up together, and that's a million

views a month. I would argue that one

video a month that gets a million views

is way more valuable for both the

audience and yourself than the four

videos that get 250,000 views. Well,

Caleb, where did you come to that

conclusion? It's the same collective

views. Ah, it's the same number of

views. It's not the same number of

eyeballs. Meaning the video that got a

million views had a high percentage of

those views be new

audience. These are people that have

never consumed your content or rarely

consumed your content before. Now the

videos that got 250,000 more than 60 to

70% of the views were from the current

audience. And there's nothing wrong with

nurturing your current audience. I want

to make sure that that's clear. But can

you see a massive discrepancy here? It's

very clear to me that the millionview

video once per month has a

disproportionate amount of value

compared to four 250,000 view videos a

month. I believe that this is why Mr.

Beast Jimmy Donaldson went with this

method. When he was posting content on

YouTube, he wasn't trying to post a

video every 3 days. He wasn't trying to

post a video every week. He was posting

a video every 4 to 8 weeks. There was

times where he would go two months in

between posting a video. Why? because he

was putting so many resources and so

much effort into each piece. Because

what he knew is rather than the majority

of YouTubers who are trying to put out a

video every week, if he put all that

effort into a video every six weeks, way

more people were going to see it, way

more people were going to enjoy it and

share it with others because it was such

a crazy concept and crazy execution of

that concept. And so I'm actually on the

lower volume, higher effort per piece

train. And the reason why I'm saying

lower volume and not higher quality is

again quality is subjective. Now over

time you get to a point where you know

what your audience deems as quality. So

you could use the term higher quality

content. I just don't like to say it

because I don't want to confuse you and

make you think that I know what quality

is. I don't. You do. So back to

LinkedIn. What I want you to do is focus

on putting more effort per piece of

content you do. Now what do you do more

of? Well, if we've been doing five posts

a week, for example, we have a pretty

good insight on what topics and what

kind of structure or formats people on

the platform are resonating with and

preferring. So, one, we can just do less

of the other and more of that. But

here's another little hack for you. Look

at the top 10% performing content. Take

the last 90 days, for example, or if

you've only been posting for 30 days,

take the last 30 days. Whatever amount

of time that you can do up to 90 days.

And what I want you to do is identify

your top 10% content. And then what I

want you to do is study the out of

it. And what you're looking for is not

all these different things that you

think could have been the reason why it

performed well. What you're looking for

is what occurred in all of these pieces

of content that I can then replicate and

put into every piece I do moving

forward. If it exists in only one or

two, then it's kind of a crapshoot. But

if you identify, and usually you're only

going to find one, maybe two things. If

you identify those one or two things,

you raise the probability of your future

content performing better than average.

And so what you're doing is you're

always learning and optimizing off of

your top content, not your general

content. A lot of people look at

everything they're making and they try

and extract learnings from it. But why

would you want to learn from the bottom

10% or the bottom 20%. I want to always

be looking at the top tier performance

and how can I replicate these scenarios,

these conditions that led to it

performing so well. And again, please

increase the volume because you see that

that platform, that channel is driving

more conversions. Again, whatever

conversions look like for you. If that's

email newsletter signups, if that's more

streams to your music, if that's more

downloads on your short film on Amazon

Prime, whatever it is, I want you to

optimize for conversions first. And

another question that I get a lot of

times is like, if my content isn't

performing well, well, what do I do?

Well, you do what I just said. Even if

your content isn't performing super

well, there is some content that's

performing better than others. And so

look at the top 10% and study what that

is. And I would encourage you to do this

on a monthly basis. If you just stick

with what the original core findings,

okay, cool. You're just optimizing on

that. But if every month you re-evaluate

the top 10%, you're always going to be

lading up. You're always improving off

of your best work and learning from your

best work rather than sticking with the

learnings that you had 6 months ago. So

the next thing that we're going to focus

on is making your content sustainable.

Like we said at the top, this only

matters if we stick with it for a long

time. That's when we start to get the

actual returns on our investment. And

so, first off, I want to just say you

need to be playing for the long term. If

you hate video, you're not going to

stick with it. So, don't do

video. Eventually, after making content,

maybe as an audio only format or a

design focus or potentially even doing

written, you may get comfortable with

the idea of putting yourself out there

online, getting feedback, and being okay

with that feedback. In which case, maybe

you'll get more comfortable with the

idea of doing video. But if that idea or

that concept of filming a video like

this with a camera here, camera here,

camera there, that sounds freaky to most

people, I wouldn't push yourself to do

it. Again, I want you to ease into this

so that it's something that you can do

for a very long time. Content creation

should be sustainable for years, not

months. Now, the next thing is to build

a simple content machine. What do I mean

by that? Well, we're not Mr. Beast on

day one. And so, what you need to do is

set a baseline of what you are wanting

to accomplish. Let's say it's one video

every two weeks for YouTube. And maybe

it's posting three shorts a week on

Instagram and YouTube Shorts. Cool.

That's simple. Now, what we can do is

consistently do that. And if we do it

for 2 or 3 months, then what we can do

is raise the bar and increase the volume

that we want to make. Some people find

batching content to be highly effective

for them. Some people will literally

block a 12-hour day and film three or

four YouTube videos, some shorts, and a

couple podcasts. And if that works for

you, amazing. What I have observed,

again, not a rule, just an observation,

is for a lot of individuals, this puts a

lot of pressure on the day. And if you

find yourself feeling that pressure a

lot of times, again, what I have

observed is that that causes poor

performance on the day of filming

because they feel so much pressure they

get anxiety, they end up getting sick or

all these crazy things start popping up

rather than having it be more of a low

pressure environment where maybe you

film a video here, a video there. The

the thing that you need to do is make

sure you are aligning your strategy with

your calendar and your schedule. What do

you have available to you? Do you have

time to be able to film it throughout

the week or do you have to batch? If

you're in a scenario where you have to

batch content, what I would recommend is

ensuring that the team you're working

with is a team that can make the

environment conducive for you to deliver

your best content. Which leads me to the

next point, which is remove yourself

from the execution. And we're going to

go really deep on this one. Out of all

of these different points within the

make it sustainable section here, this

is where we're going to spend the

majority of the time. If you can afford

it or as soon as you can afford it,

please invest in building a team. Now,

I'm going to go really in depth on this

in the next chapter or the next section

of this course here uh where we

literally talk only about team. But if

you have the capital, if you have the

resources to do it, I encourage you to

invest in this immediately. Now, this

might look like hiring freelancers in

the beginning or agencies that you work

with, something that's a little bit more

minimal on the upfront cost and allows

you to test and make sure that you're

getting a positive ROI. So then you can

reinvest and redeploy capital into

furthering and building out your team.

Now, about the team, something that I

have observed is that filming content is

hard for the talent. Why is it hard?

Well, there's high pressure, right?

We're wondering, uh, how is this going

to perform? Am I going to be able to

deliver this and make a great piece of

content off of it? Yeah, sure. That's

the natural. But then there's also these

like crazy questions that pop up. When

you're staring into the camera lens and

you're saying all this you're

wondering, is this actually interesting?

Is it valuable? Are people going to

actually learn and change their actions

based on what I'm sharing? Are they

enjoying this? Is this boring? These are

all natural questions that come up. And

so that happens during the film session.

Then oftentimes, and I'm sure if you're

listening to this or watching this and

you've filmed content, you're resonating

with what I'm saying. You drive home.

And on the drive home, you're like,

"Fuck, I I could have done so much

better. That was not very good." And

you're going through all of these like

inner critic, like a inner critic

monologue that you're having with

yourself. Here's how I solve this issue.

I make sure that the team that is around

the film session that is around the

content creation makes it easier for

you, not harder for you. What do I mean?

Well, I have an entire playbook on how

to go about creating an environment to

make your talent feel comfortable. So,

for those of you who are building your

brand and trying to get a team around

you, this playbook will be gold.

For those of you that are the content

creators behind the scenes that are

trying to improve how you capture

content with your talent, this will be

gold. And I'm going to walk you

through it just a little bit at a high

level, but again, I would encourage you

download it, study it, study it, study

it. I believe that it is not the content

creator's job to create the right

environment. It's the team's job. And

so, it starts, in my opinion, with the

videographer. Now, to solve the problem

of you wondering if what you're saying

is interesting, what you need is a

videographer who gives you visual

feedback as you are filming. So, what I

started to notice that I just naturally

would do when I was filming with talent

is I would nod my head when they were

saying something good. Now, as what they

were saying escalated, it got better and

better and better. The intensity in

which I nodded my head would increase.

And it sounds funny, but every single

person I've ever filmed with actually

commented on this and would tell me how

much it reinforced what they were

saying. They knew, "Oh, okay. This is a

good moment. I'm going to go deeper on

this." And so what you're doing is you

are giving them real time feedback

because the difficulty with creating

content is the feedback loop. It can be

fairly quick with social media, of

course, but it's still pretty extended.

We're going to film this video and this

course will not drop for a minimum of 6

weeks. I mean, that is the earliest

it'll drop from when we filmed it. So, I

won't get any feedback from you, the

audience, which is who I care about the

most, for 6 weeks minimum, probably more

like two months. But what I am getting

is Trevor behind the camera, is nodding

his head or when I say something that he

thought was really good, he's putting a

thumbs up and letting me know that's

some good One, maybe I'm going to

double down and go further on it and

dive deeper, but two, I just know that

what I'm saying isn't boring as

This is incredibly empowering and

enabling for the talent that you are

working with. It literally changes the

way that they deliver their message.

These are all tactics that ladder up to

the principle of making a conducive

environment to capture great content.

Okay? So, they all all the tactics flow

out of this principle. And one of them

is when they're done saying something

great, when you take a break, when a

take is over, go up and give them a fist

pound or a high five. I've been doing it

my whole career. I've been the guy

behind the scenes doing it. And now I am

in front of the camera in this like very

like intimidating environment. And every

time that we take a break, Trevor's

coming up and giving me a fist pound and

saying that was great and then calling

out one or two things that I said that

he thought really stood out. I've been

doing it for years, but as somebody who

is now on the receiving end of it, I

can't tell you how effective

this is. It's unbelievable because one,

it keeps my momentum going. I'm tired.

Like we've been filming this for a long

time. I'm exhausted. It literally gives

me energy. And I would see it with

talent that I've worked with where I I

remember I would see them their energy

starting to fade and then I behind the

camera would just increase my energy.

Even if I was exhaust, I'd be like, "All

right, I'm going to figure it out." And

they match that. And so what you want is

you want a team around you that is

trying to make your environment or the

environment you're filming in the

easiest possible for you to communicate

the message you have within you to your

audience. The 2.0 version of this is not

only are they giving you dabs, giving

you praise when you're doing a good job,

they are also thinking through the frame

of a skeptic. They're thinking through

all of the objections that your audience

is going to have when they consume the

content. And just like a good video

sales letter, a VSSL on your website

overcomes sales objections that maybe

the prospect would bring to the

salesperson on the call, you're

overcoming those in the video before

they even get on the call. And I like to

think of really welldone content as

accomplishing the same thing. What we're

doing after each section here is Trevor

and I are sitting down and going, "Okay,

what are some areas that we could like

poke holes in? What what context do we

need it? What questions can we answer

for you guys before you even ask it?"

Because ultimately, I believe if you do

that, you are going to build greater

trust with the audience. You make it

easier for them to trust what you are

saying and then take action on it. One

more tactic on this because I think it's

really helpful and then the rest I'm

going to leave for you to study in the

playbook is once the film session is

done, 15 to 20 minutes after, I always

would send a message to whoever I filmed

with telling them how great I thought

they did. Now, if it was a rough film

session, I wouldn't lie. What I would

say is, "I am so impressed with how you

showed up and still pushed through

despite this, this, and this." You never

want to your talent because

eventually they pick up on it and they

realize like, okay, a compliment from so

and so never is actually that helpful

because they don't mean anything they

say. So, you want to always be truthful

about it. But the reality is is like if

you've had a really hard day,

like if I got an email from a partner of

ours and it was really bad this morning,

that would throw me off. So maybe it

wouldn't be the best video ever, but

it'd be impressive that I still showed

up and decided to do the action

regardless. So, you always want either

your team or if you're the team watching

this, you want to send your talent a

message telling them how well they did.

And I would encourage you to call out

one or two things they said. This way,

they really actually know you were

paying attention to what they said. It

wasn't just like, "Oh, the lighting was

great and all that." No, no. The content

of what was being said was valuable,

insightful, and useful for myself, and I

know it will be for our greater

audience. This then allows them to go on

to the rest of their day or into their

evening feeling better about what they

made. And what that does is if we

believe brand is how we defined it at

the beginning of this that creates a

intentional pairing between relevant

things them and good content and

eventually they start to associate that.

And so then they start to associate good

feelings, excitement and positivity with

film days. A lot of people really hate

film days and they really see it on

their calendar as like a massive dread.

They know it's necessary, but they don't

want to do it. What you want is an

environment that you look forward to it.

When you see film day on your calendar,

you want to be excited about it because

it's so enjoyable because the

environment is so reinforcing of what

you are doing. The next one is to

systematize repurposing. Now, real

quick, I want to give a big qualifier

here. Repurposing content, like for

example, what we talked about earlier

with the waterfall method. You make a

long form piece of content and then you

clip micro from it. That is a great way

to start. But it is 2025 and we are now

at a point where all the platforms are

fragmented and behave differently. The

best version of content and we'll talk

about this more in a little bit but is

making content contextual to the

platform itself. Making it native for

Tik Tok, for Instagram, for LinkedIn,

for YouTube long form. And sometimes

pulling clips from long form is native,

right? Like a lot of podcast clips do

really well. More podcast clips don't do

well than podcast clips that do. And so

if you want predictive power and you and

you want to be certain that the piece is

going to do well, the best version is

going to be making it contextual to the

platform. However, if you are earlier in

your efforts here, and I'm talking like

first 3 years even, you're probably

going to be doing more repurposing. The

2.0 0 version of this is not just

clipping or extracting short form

content from long form. It's actually

using insights of how content has

performed on one platform in one medium

and using that to inform new mediums for

new platforms. Let me give you an

example. There was a client that I was

working with a couple years ago and she

had a really powerful statement. I I

can't remember off the top of my head

right now. So, uh it was powerful but I

can't quite remember it and I apologize.

She put it out as a tweet. That was it.

We put it out as a tweet and so many

people were responding to it. It was one

of her top performing, like most liked

tweets of all time. So many responses,

so many people sharing that tweet to

their stories and tagging her. And so we

thought we had something here. This is

called social listening. We paid

attention to what the audience was

saying. They were calling this quality.

They're like, "This is quality,

y'all." So what did we do? We tripled,

quadrupled, fiveupled, whatever that

word is down on this. And what we did is

we then created a short and we had her

expand on this statement. We used

literally the tweet as the hook and then

she explained why she came up with that

quote, why she said that, what the story

was, what the scenario she was going

through that inspired that quote. Next,

we actually created a poster of the

quote and we put it up in a very cool,

aesthetically pleasing environment and

we took a photo of it. Like I said

earlier, if you were paying attention,

something that does really well, this is

a tactic, not a principle, but something

that does really well right now is

taking a photo of a real life thing,

whether it's like you're writing on a

post-it note or it's a printed, you

know, quote or whatever, that is doing

really well on social. So what we did is

we printed the quote, took a photo of

it, posted it, and it was one of, if not

her top performing Instagram post of all

time. So then what we did is we turned

it into a longer form hashed out

LinkedIn post. So we took the quote and

we use that as the hook cuz it had been

proven effective on Twitter. It had well

now X, but it was Twitter at the time.

And it had been proven effective on

Instagram, on YouTube shorts, on Tik

Tok. It did well everywhere. So we're

like, cool. We're not going to

around with the hook. We're just going

to keep it the same. So, we did that and

then we had her expand on it, right? We

took a little bit of what she said in

the short form clip and then we had her

add or round it out, add more

commentary, more color commentary to it.

That performed really well. It

was definitely a top three, if not her

top post on LinkedIn. So then, guess

what we did? We used that to inform

making a YouTube long form video on this

entire quote. And so what we did is we

utilized I think we did a version of the

quote as the title. You know, YouTube,

you kind of have to play the youtuby

game. But what we did is we used that

and it informed a long I think it was

like a 25 30 minute video. It was

probably in her top 10. I don't want to

say that it was her top video. It

wasn't, but it was in the top 10. It

performed really well. How

incredible that we started with a tweet

and what started as a tweet developed

into some of the top performing content

for all of her platforms. But did you

notice what we didn't do is just repost

the tweet everywhere. We made that tweet

and remade it contextual to what the

needs of the platforms were at the time.

If you're listening or watching this

right now, please like rewind or I'll

just say it again. Make the content

contextual to the platform. Reverse

engineer what the platform is telling

you it wants and what its users want and

make it in that way. It can be the same

exact message but repackaged

differently. An analogy that I love to

use and I'll probably share it multiple

times throughout this course is you

watching this. You are you. Okay? Wow,

what a what a breakthrough statement.

But you are you. But you show up to

different scenarios and circumstances

differently. Let's say, for example,

you're going and getting brunch with

your family on Saturday. And then

Saturday night, you're going to go out

and meet up with the ladies and go out

for cocktails. And then Monday morning,

you have a business meeting. you. Let's

say your name is Sarah. Sarah is showing

up to all of these different

circumstances, events as Sarah. But the

reality is is Sarah is going to talk

about different topics and speak with a

different tone and probably use

different vocabulary given the different

scenarios. That's not her being

inauthentic. That is her revealing

different parts of herself contextual to

the environment she is in. Knowing her

audience is what she's doing. Well,

social media is the exact same thing.

All the platforms are just these

different events that you're going to.

So you show up as you. Sarah shows up as

Sarah on LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Instagram,

YouTube, Facebook, all of them. But you

reveal different parts of yourself. You

emphasize different parts and you use

different vocabulary because you're in a

different environment. That's what it

looks like to create contextual content

to the platform you're on. And then

lastly, I would encourage you define

your energy rhythm. And this sounds like

so woo woo and blah blah blah, but

really what it is is it's knowing

thyself, okay? It's knowing I perform

best. I have the most amount of energy

and clarity of thought in the morning or

I'm way better late at night. Whatever

is your best time, I would encourage you

to schedule your content creation around

that. For me, I know that probably

around midday, I start to get a little

tired. So, in the morning is my best

midday and then towards the end of the

day I start picking back up. And so I

try to plan accordingly to that. If I

were really good at night and I sucked

in the morning, I was just all groggy

and like clear, I wouldn't film in the

mornings, right? Because not only would

I not enjoy it, it wouldn't perform as

well. And so just look at where you find

your most optimal times, where you feel

most dialed, and schedule your content

sessions around that. And a subpoint to

that is protect your creative and your

content time just like it's an important

business meeting. Something that I've

seen a lot of people do is kind of

depprioritize this and they move their

content day around all the time. And I

understand very important if you're

running a business or you know if you're

an artist and you're meeting with a

potential buyer for your painting or

whatever. Sure, that's very important

and that I would prioritize over your

content creation. But I would tell you

that unless you have a very mature team,

more than likely what will happen over

time is if you continue to reschedule

and push off content days, unless

they're very mature and they've been

around this for a while, they're going

to interpret it like it is not a

priority for you. And if it's not a

priority for you, it's going to become

less of a priority for them. And so the

way that you show up often times will

dictate unfortunately or fortunately

depending on how you look at it, how

your team shows up for you. Hello there.

This is me interrupting this programming

for a very interesting little

advertisement. I just want to let you

know about a email newsletter that we

are putting together. Now, this isn't

going to be your traditional newsletter.

It's not like a weekly or monthly

cadence. We're just going to

occasionally send you dope free

that we think is going to

actually drive massive impact for your

brand and scale your content rapidly.

And so, if that sounds interesting, you

can go to caleb rston.com, enter your

email, and we'll send you some dope

goodies. All right, the next section is

utilizing storytelling in your content.

Now, I don't think this is going to be

any secret to anyone. Storytelling is

incredibly powerful and effective. So

much so that you're seeing one of the

creators who is most known for maybe not

utilizing as much of traditional

storytelling techniques, Mr. Beast, who

has been more like adrenaline go. He is

even implementing far more storytelling

tactics into his content. Especially if

you've watched Beast Games, you You know

exactly what I'm talking about. Stories

aren't just entertaining and engaging.

They also change people's perspectives.

They allow the individual to see maybe a

similar concept or a similar

circumstance that they've been dealing

with from a whole new perspective. But

they also keep people hooked. I mean,

attention is the greatest asset right

now in today's age, right? It's what

everyone is looking for. And

storytelling does keep people hooked. It

does retain attention. Stories also

create an emotional connection between

you and your audience. They allow you to

provide more depth and round out the

concept or principle that you are

sharing. People have a harder time

remembering facts, but what they do

remember is the stories that you tell

them and the new perspective they were

able to gain because of the story. Here

is a storytelling framework that you can

use in your content. But please do not

operate off of this framework like it's

something rigid. It is not written in

concrete. It's not in stone. This is a

guide for you. You now have the rules.

Feel free to break the rules. Like move

things around. Like whatever you find is

working most effectively for you. Please

use this in a fluid way rather than a

rigid way. What we're going to go over

is the hook, the problem, the journey,

the lesson, and then the call to action.

First, the hook. We have to get

attention fast. We are living in a world

where you're competing with everything.

You're competing with all the other

creators, all of their friends, everyone

on social media that is making content.

You're also competing with the

dog that's barking at them. I mean,

there is so much going on in people's

lives that you're competing for their

attention for. And so, you have to get

their attention immediately. Depending

on the platform that you're making

content on, some of them you only have

like a second or two to get that

attention. If we're talking Instagram,

Tik Tok, Facebook reels, YouTube shorts,

LinkedIn video tab, any sort of short

form video, you have about two or three

seconds to get their attention. If you

do not do that, guess what they're

doing? Not consuming the rest cuz

they've already scrolled five posts

further down. Now, for YouTube long

form, what a lot of the industry experts

like to say is that 30 seconds, you have

30 seconds to capture attention. I don't

really agree with that. I think you have

about 15 to 20 seconds max to capture

attention. And really what they're

looking for is like one, is this video

actually what I clicked on, right? The

the packaging, or am I getting, for

those of you that remember back in the

day, the Rick Rald thing, am I getting

Rick rolled, right? Or is this actually

what I'm looking for? Two, is this the

person that I want to listen to telling

me this information? For a strong hook,

I recommend starting with a very bold

statement, potentially a contrarian

view, something that is uh different

that you see differently than your

counterparts or industry experts in your

field. This can also be an unexpected

fact, although I I do think that those

are kind of getting a little tiresome at

this point. But I think that no matter

what, if you say something that most

people believe to be true and you claim

it to be false and give an alternative

take, you're almost always going to

catch people's attention. Here's two

examples for you. Subscribers, views,

likes don't matter. What actually

matters is that is an example of a

contrarian statement. A lot of

counterparts, a lot of the industry

experts within online content creation

would say the opposite of what I just

said there. A lot of them are pushing

for those metrics and that hook would

catch attention because it is different

than what the majority of other content

creators are saying. Thus, it stands

out. Another great example of a good

hook is a pattern interrupt. So, one of

the top performing clips I ever made for

Gary Vaynerchuk was uh the blueberry

clip. And he literally starts it off by

he's like chomping on some blueberries

and he goes, "I eat blueberries like

it's my job." And then the next

thing he says is, "You missed the first

30 I ate." And this was like such a such

a pattern interrupt for a lot of people.

This was one of at the time it was his

most viral clip at that time. And so

basically what you want to do is you

want to either provide a contrarian

point of view, a pattern interrupt. You

want to ask a thoughtprovoking question,

something that is going to be a thumbs

stopper that is going to cause them to

have to watch the rest of the video

because they're so interested. Next, we

have the problem. This is where you're

going to set up the stakes. Here, you're

going to introduce a conflict or some

sort of emotional investment. And this

doesn't have to be a massive conflict or

anything like ultra dramatic or

anything. Essentially, what you want is

some sort of problem or thing that the

main character has to overcome in some

way, shape, or form. Now, ideally, you

want to make the problem specific and

relatable. So, ideally, this is

something that your audience is going to

be like, well, yeah, I've gone through

something similar. They're going to be

able to see themselves in that problem.

They maybe have recently encountered

something very similar. An example might

be, I was working 14 hours a day for my

hero, Gary Vaynerchuk, but I still felt

stuck. This creates stakes. It shows you

how much I care and that I love working

for Gary and that he is my hero, but

that I was in this inner turmoil of

feeling stuck as an example. Next, we

have the journey. This is how we

overcome it, right? In the traditional

like storytelling mantra, this is how

the prince slays the dragon to rescue

the princess. Now, one thing to note is

people resonate with progress, not

perfection. And so, if you're sharing

this journey, I would encourage you to

not just share the highlights. Share the

low lightss, right? The low points where

you've made mistakes. In the example of

I was working 14 hours a day for my hero

Gary Vaynerchuk, but I still felt stuck.

I would then go on to tell the story of

how I got unstuck through a sequence of

victories and losses. Okay? It wouldn't

necessarily just all be roses because

that's not what life is. And people

resonate and connect and relate to your

struggles, I would argue, more than your

successes. And I encourage you, show the

messy middle. Show where you're doubting

yourself, where you're doubting the

opportunity you're in. Maybe you're

building a business right now and you

can share how you're like unsure how

this is going to actually go. Is this

going to build into some big business?

Is it going to be successful? Am I going

to be able to provide for my family? Or

am I going to have to go back and get a

real normal job, a 9 to-5? If you're a

musician, maybe what you end up doing is

you're putting out tracks and you're

trying a new style of music. Maybe

you've traditionally done more rock and

roll and you're entering the country

music world and you're uncertain if that

audience is going to resonate with it. I

think that your audience is going to

resonate more with you explaining why

you're trying this new thing and the

fact that you're not certain of how it's

going to go. I mean, that's what I've

been doing probably throughout this

course. Maybe you've noticed it, but

like there's been times where I'm

indicating I think this is going to be a

powerful project. I think this is going

to affect a lot of people and I think

it'll lead to a lot of good outcomes for

Rston, my consulting firm. But I don't

know. I have no idea. I'm investing a

lot of money, at least for me, and a lot

of time and effort into this, right?

Like, we've been filming all day

yesterday, all day today, and

we'll film again tomorrow. And like, I'm

exhausted. I'm investing a lot into this

and I have no idea if it's going to turn

out. I think it will, but I don't know.

And I think that me sharing that, more

than likely, you resonate with that. At

some point in your life, you have also

too had a moment where you invested a

lot into a project. Maybe it was back in

fifth grade when you were working on

that volcano for science and it was like

you put a lot into it but you didn't

know if it was going to actually erupt

for Mrs. Fields, right? Like I don't

know. So I really truly believe in your

storytelling framework this is the key.

We want to share the transparency. We

want to share these moments. We want the

audience to see themsself through you in

some way. An example of this could be I

realized I was burning out because I was

trying to do everything and that's when

I realized that I could do blank. That

is an example obviously very concise

version of it but that is an example of

giving an insight to the journey a

mistake that I had made. I was trying to

do everything and I realized that I was

burning out. Now for the lesson this is

where you make it useful for your

audience. Every story that you tell is

going to give them a new perspective and

a shift. It's going to open them up to

new possibilities and new realities. So,

this is the moment when you give them

the lesson, the takeaway, the thing that

they can act on. Otherwise, it's just

they're being entertained. You're just

telling a story, and they're like, "Oh,

cool. Great story." If you give them the

lesson, the takeaway, and you make it

easy for them to take action on that by

giving them step-by-step instructions,

chunking it down, making it as easy as

possible for them to change what they

do. Then, what you're doing is you are

providing value to your audience. Cuz

ultimately when people say provide

value, that's all providing value is

something that is useful, something that

the audience can take and immediately

put into action. That is what valuable

content within the education space is.

Now, an example of how I might

transition to this is here's what I

learned from that season of my career

and here are three ways that you can

apply these learnings in your career so

that you avoid the mistakes that I made.

Ideally, what you want to do is tie this

lesson back into what your expertise is

and really ideally back into what your

offer is. Because ultimately, we are

trying to either build our business,

build our craft, build our art, whatever

it is that we are offering the world, we

want to make people aware of that. And

so, every time that we can tie our

lessons, our stories back to that, the

better. And lastly, we have the CTA or

the call to action. Now, immediately

when I say that, 99% of you immediately

thought it was something like, "Now, if

you want to learn more about things like

this, go to my website and buy my offer

or pay for my course or whatever

shit." That's not necessarily the case.

A call to action just literally means

telling people to take action. It

doesn't mean that you have to sell them

something. I would argue that your best

content is not going to be pushing and

selling If anything, the 2.0, 3.0,

4.0 0 version of this once you have

bigger budgets is you just retarget

those individuals who paid. That's a

totally another video. We'll do that one

other day. The call to action can be a

very simple thing of comment below on

what your biggest takeaway was and how

you're going to apply it to your life

moving forward. That can be a very

simple call to action. It drives

engagement. It causes the viewer to

think and actually probably identify

what they are going to actually do and

then increases the likelihood that they

will change their actions. So, an

example of this is if you're struggling

with trying to do everything yourself

and burning out, try delegating and

training your team. Please, what I would

love to hear from you, comment below,

tell me which of these tactics you're

going to use in training your team and

delegating some of the tasks that you

currently have on your plate so that you

no longer are the one trying to do

everything so you don't burn out. Now,

ultimately, what this does is it bridges

the gap between engagement and

viewership and actually taking action.

And that's the ultimate goal of

educational content. Now, we have two

more sections here on story. And then

right after that, I am going to go very

in-depth on what I believe educational

content is, what its purpose is, and how

you should go about making it. But

first, we're going to dive a little bit

deeper into more around storytelling,

which brings us to the best types of

stories to tell. Not all stories work

equally as well in content. The best

ones fall into these categories. The

first one is origin stories. Uh people

love this one. Now, if you start your

journey of making content and you do

this for several years, I promise you,

you're going to get bored of your origin

story and you're going to get to the

point where you start telling your

content team, "Stop cutting that. Stop

including that." Do not do that. You

need to treat your content like you're

always trying to reach a cold audience

because that's what you're trying to do.

And guess what's so unique about a cold

audience? They don't know your

origin story. Origin stories are what

people resonate with, in my opinion, the

most. It's how you got to where you are.

It's the thing that you're going to tell

that is going to be the most relatable

for the audience watching. The thing

that's not relatable is where you're at

right now. Let's say you're a very

successful businesswoman and you've

built a massive business and you have,

you know, your $500 million net worth.

You're huge. You're on the cover of

Forbes, all this crazy That is not

relatable. But how you went from being a

barista at Starbucks, barely making ends

meet, all the way to that point, that is

what we, the audience, are going to

resonate with. So really, please lean

into your origin story. This tells the

audience why you are doing what you're

doing. Okay? This gives us the

understanding, right? This is the Peter

Parker getting bit by the spider. This

is Batman encountering the terrible

situation with his parents. This also

gives insight to pivotal moments that

shaped your career and shaped who you

are as a person. We are a collective of

everything that has happened in our life

up to this point. And if you don't share

that with your audience, they're not

going to truly understand why you do

what you do, why you say things the way

you say them, why you act the way you

act. So this is me right now committing

to you guys. I am going to continue to

dive deeper and deeper over the next

year into my origin story, into why I

operate and think the way that I think.

For example, we talked about how we

shape the environment for filming. There

are a lot of things that occurred in my

life leading up to working on set that

allowed me to have a completely

different perspective and insight into

how to make talent feel comfortable.

Another example is the first video that

we put out on YouTube talking about my

career journey, right? I literally tell

you in that video how at 15 years old,

Sean Kel gave me the book Crush It by

Gary Vaynerchuk. I read it and forever

changed how I viewed my career. I all of

a sudden realized I could do video

content. And so it gives you insight to

so many different things. why I chose

this career path, how I've navigated it,

why I've overemphasized social media

even at the time when the majority of

marketers and my counterparts were

talking about how it was a fad. You also

gain insight on probably why I

referenced Gary so much throughout this

course in a lot of different speeches

and podcasts that I do because Gary has

had such a huge impact on my life. But

if you didn't know the fact that I read

his book when I was 15 years old in

high school and decided to

completely change the trajectory and

course of my life, you'd be like, "Wow,

this guy references Gary a lot. It's

kind of interesting. It's kind of weird.

Why does he like Gary so much?" And this

gives insight as to why. The next one

that people really relate to is failure

stories. I think most humans have one

thing in common, which is we fail. By

telling failure stories, what you do is

you become relatable to your audience

and you build more trust with them.

People trust vulnerability more than

they trust success. They trust failure

more than they trust wins. If you do

tell these stories, don't only talk

about what went wrong. Don't make it

just a sob story. You hopefully gained

lessons and insights from that failure,

from that loss, from those mistakes. And

what you can do is not only did you

learn from it, but you can help others

learn from it and avoid having to make

the investment of time, money, whatever

that you did and lost in your mistake.

And so ultimately you are servicing your

audience or providing value, usefulness,

so that they can then make different

decisions and avoid that pitfall

altogether. For example, referencing the

career video again because at the time

of recording this, it's the only video

that I've put out on YouTube. I share

the story of how I thought I was a hot

shot, big shot. I signed two I502 legal

cannabis companies in Washington state

and I had tripled my income and I was

like, I was the big man. I was hot

And then that same client cut my monthly

compensation in half and I had to go

fire three friends that I had hired.

Again, Mr. big shot immediately brought

down to low very very disappointed

little Caleb. It was brutal. And I

shared that story. But not only did I

share the story, I shared what I learned

and how I will never make that mistake

again. And what I tried to do is

articulate in a very clear way how you,

the viewer, can avoid the same mistake

in your craft, in your career, in your

business. Now, as much as I think

sharing the losses and the failure

stories are very important, it's also

extremely important to emphasize your

success stories. Otherwise, people will

just think that you are a failure

constantly learning. And that's not what

we want. We want to actually create the

association between you and the success

that you have had. More on that in a

little bit. But what you want to do is

show before and after transformations.

Okay? So ideally, these success stories

end up being the proof that validates

that you are the right person to be

listening to on this subject matter. And

when you validate that you are the right

person to listen to on the subject

matter, what you're doing is increasing

trust in the viewer. And if you increase

trust in the viewer, a lot of magical

things happen. And if you start to

highlight small wins that became big

results, this starts to build on your

credibility. For example, I like to

reference as often as possible how I

worked with Gary to grow his Tik Tok

from 300,000 followers to 3.5 million in

just 3 months. And by doing this, I am

providing you with credibility or proof

that what I'm about to say is valid

because I have had success in this

realm. Another one is customer and

client success. This is more proof that

not only can you execute something for

yourself, but you can do it for others.

you can replicate this success. And if

you can replicate this success, then why

would you, the viewer, not believe that

you could do the same thing? This is

another moment where you get to let the

audience see themselves in your content.

Ideally, they see themselves in your

success story and then they go and take

action and get that same success. An

example would be I met with an agency

owner about 2 years ago. They were

asking me, "How do I get more out of my

editors? How do I get them to be better

and up to speed?" And I shared with him

a very very simple tactic and it comes

from the principle of let them know what

you like so they do more of it. And what

I told him is I said instead of only

leaving comments on frame of all the

things that you want your editor to do

differently, spend at least the same

amount of time leaving comments on

reinforcing what you want them to

continue doing. Because editors, if you

only get notes on what you should

change, well, you don't know if the

client liked what you did on, you know,

minute 1313. And so then they have to

spend energy on the next edit wondering,

should I continue doing subtitles that

way? Should I still do transitions in

the same way? They don't know. And they

have to expend effort in guessing what

you liked. So call it what you like

equally, if not more than what you want

changed. And he texted me about a year

after that and told me it was the

greatest insight that he had ever heard

in training a team. And his output and

quality, and by quality, I mean the

performance of the content increased and

went better for his clients. And his

client retention increased because one

of the common problems that a lot of

agencies experience is high client churn

due to poor editors. Well, this changed

how he trained his editors and it

changed his agency forever. There's an

example of me sharing a client success

story. The final one that I'm going to

share with you is industry stories. Now,

I like to take a contrarian view to this

because what you don't want to do is

just be another person that's agreeing

with everybody else and regurgitating

all the same So, if you have the

same opinion as other people, ah, I

mean, yeah, sure, make the content, put

your opinion out there, but I don't

think that you're going to find that is

as effective at catching attention and

sparking conversation. And so what I

would encourage you to do is look at

what the people in your industry are

talking about. And when you have a

differing opinion, put it out

respectfully, of course. Don't be

talking and naming names and stuff,

but share the industry trope that

everybody touts as gospel. And then

share your contrary belief or your view

on it. An example here is maybe you call

out the fact that a lot of people are

encouraging content creators to make

heavy calls to action for their offer in

their organic content. And maybe you

believe differently like I do. Maybe you

start the video off by saying never tell

your audience about your

offer in your organic content. And then

you expand on it. This is going to take

a very typical trope that a lot of

people are touting in my industry and

flip it on its head. It's going to catch

attention and provide a slightly unique

perspective that most people have not

heard. Now, this next section is purely

about educational content. So, for

anybody who is making entertainment,

this might not be as useful. But for

those of you who are making educational

content, this is going to be possibly

the most critical next few minutes of

this entire course. This is the purpose

of educational content. If you and I

agree on the same definition of branding

and brand. Branding is the pairing of

things. And good branding is an

intentional pairing of relevant things

consistently which then creates the

byproduct which is brand which is when

the audience inherently associates the

two things. Then cool, we're on the same

page. And what I'm about to describe

will make a lot of sense. In educational

content, what you want to do is you want

to share success stories. What ends up

happening when you intentionally pair

yourself with the relevant thing,

success stories, you and success

stories, is over time the audience

begins to associate you with success.

Now, what happens there is not the magic

sauce, okay? That's not the epic

because what that causes is trust. trust

in what you say. So that's amazing, but

that's not the final byproduct that

we're looking for. When they trust what

you have to say, now they start to hear

the lessons and takeaways that you

share. When they trust those lessons and

takeaways that you share, they then

start to take

action. This is when the gold starts.

When they start taking action, they

start to get the results that they want.

They get their desired outcome. They see

that success that they were hearing

about in your client stories for

themsel. When this happens consistently,

what begins to happen is the audience

doesn't associate you with success

stories. The audience begins to

associate you with their success. This

is powerful because what ends up

happening is they realize whether it's

conscious or subconscious that they

always get more than what they invest

with you because all they had to do was

invest their time to consume and then

their time to take action. Now,

sometimes you're going to be telling

them something that's going to also cost

money. Maybe it's running paid ads. So

yeah, they have to invest money in it.

But I guarantee if they get the success

outcome, it is greater than the

investment they made. And so what you're

doing is you are teaching your audience

that what they invest with you always

leads to greater outcomes. And this is

the brand that you start to build with

your audience. And guess what happens

all of a sudden? When you make your

audience aware of the offer you have,

they believe, they trust that what they

will invest in this offer is very little

in comparison to what they're going to

get as the outcome. I can't tell you how

many different people I've worked with

where we have done this at scale. There

was one company that I worked with and

we were putting out a lot of educational

content, specifically long- form content

on LinkedIn and YouTube. This company

started conducting in-person seminars. I

remember I would every once in a while

try to attend them and and bounce around

and mingle with the guests. And the

question that I would always ask them

is, "Hey, what what was the the

conversation with the salesperson like?

What was the point of sale like?" And

they would almost all say the exact same

thing. I literally told the salesperson,

"Shut the up and take my credit

card." Because through the free content

you put out, I knew that whatever you're

going to charge for was worth far more

than what I had invested. So if I'm

paying $1,000 to go to the seminar, I

know I'm going to get at a minimum

$10,000 worth of value. But actually,

the way that we created content, they

were getting like 50 to 100x the value

of their investment. Ultimately,

educational content is just scaling

trust. And when you scale trust, doors

that you could never imagine fleeing

wide open for you. Opportunities start

knocking at your door like you could

never imagine. People come into your

life that you never would have thought

would have any interest in you. And the

profit that you are able to make on your

offer or for your company goes through

the roof. Again, educational content, I

believe, is ultimately just scaling

trust. and trust makes everything in

business and life easier. Now, we're on

to having your community drive your

content. I would encourage you, please

involve your audience in what you are

creating. I'm going to give you an

immediate example of this actually that

happened literally last night. We're

here filming this content and uh an

individual who is here that works at

this studio, he also makes music. And we

were talking about just different ways

to involve and get more engagement from

his audience. And one of the things that

we were talking about is a lot of

musicians, they have, you know, multiple

different versions of a verse for a

track, as an example, that they're

working on. Or they might have a guitar

lick that they're working on, and they

have a couple of different ideas or

versions that they're working on. This

applies, by the way, to like filmmakers,

to authors, like literally any medium

that you're making. And I told him,

well, a very simple way to engage your

audience and to get them to feel very

bought in to this single or an album,

but let's call it a single for now that

you're releasing is to upload maybe to

your Instagram or whatever platform you

prefer, the two different options. So,

let's say you have two different

versions of a verse that you're going to

run in a track that you're releasing.

You upload both of them and you allow

your audience to tell you which one they

like the most. Guess what? They're going

to be invested. How cool, right?

And if you're an author, you can do the

same thing. You might have two different

versions of a chapter. Sure. You might

have two different versions of the title

of the book. There's so many different

things that you can do here. But if you

involve your audience, one, you're

making content or you're making

something that you know they're going to

want because they have told you they

want it. But also, they are so much more

bought in. They're going to be your

advocates. They're going to go out and

be your missionaries telling other

people about what you produced because

they were part of the process. The

mindset shift here is shifting from

creator first to community first. If you

make everything about them and serving

them and bringing them into your world,

bringing them into your content

creation, it's a totally different

ballgame. It's no longer just a one-way

talking at them. It's talking with them.

Next is you want to create a feedback

loop or feedback loops. This is where

you listen and adapt. Listen and

iterate. This is where the magic is.

This is when literally people think that

you're reading their mind. I

believe the best content ideas actually

come directly from your audience because

you're making content to serve your

audience. Let them indicate to you what

they want more of. Now, I do not

necessarily believe that what this looks

like is posting a poll being like, "What

do you want to hear from me?" I like

that for like Q&A format, but I actually

don't think that that is the best way

because they don't know what they want.

Let's just be honest. They they don't

know what they need. But what they do is

they will send you DMs or they'll

comment questions. That's where you want

to see the insights. So I I find when

people make polls asking their audience,

what should I make next? I'm not nearly

as much of a fan of that. I think that

that is way too blue ocean and doesn't

provide any sort of constraints for them

to make the decision within. However,

the questions in your DMs, the questions

in your comment section, that is insight

on what your community is wanting more

of from you. An incredible example of

this, like I kind of said at the top of

this section, is Gary spends an

incredible amount of his time doing what

we refer to as social listening. He is

looking at tweet replies. He is looking

at Instagram DMs. He is looking at

comments on his content and he is taking

all of that in and synthesizing it. What

he does is he starts to notice that

maybe five people today asked him the

same question or a very similar version

of a question. And what Gary does so

well is he immediately acts on that and

creates content answering that question.

Now what he doesn't do is say, "Man, so

many people have been asking me about

blank." He immediately jumps into it and

addresses the problem or question that

he is receiving from his audience. And

then this crazy thing happens. People

comment on his post being like, "How did

you know I needed this right now, Gary?

You're somehow reading my mind." And

it's almost like he is reading their

mind because what he's doing is

recognizing if five people in the last 3

hours ask me a very similar question,

there are thousands of people that for

whatever reason, whatever woo woo magic

in the universe, they're experiencing

that right now. And they need that

insight right now. And so if you do

this, if you pay attention to what your

community is saying and the feedback

they're giving you, you can be making

content that is literally speaking to

them in their exact moment right now,

aka reading their mind. Another thing

that you can do is you can make your

audience the hero of the story. By doing

this, you encourage them to want to take

action on what you're sharing, get the

success, and then become one of those

success stories. So what this looks like

is sharing community wins,

transformations, and case studies. If

you have a weekly call that you do on

Zoom for free for people in your

audience and you're telling them or

sharing information with them or sharing

some new direction or something that

they can do and they take action on it

and it changes their life, you should be

sharing that on social. Don't just

keep it for the community. share that

publicly because what that will do is

one, it will incentivize current members

of your community to take action and win

so that maybe they can be a success

story, but two, it will cause people who

are on the outside that are a little bit

more skeptical to be less skeptical and

trust you more. An incredible example of

this is if you receive a DM from

somebody in your community, somebody

that's in your audience, and they've

gained success. they tried something,

they put into action something that you

told them, a lesson, a takeaway, and

they got the result that they were

looking for. What you could do is you

could turn that into content. Maybe what

you do is you do a an Instagram video

call with them, record it, and then you

put that piece of content out there.

Now, no, this is not going to be your

top performing content by any means.

Anything like this, you're not going to

see massive engagement on. You're not

going to see a ton of views, likes, or

anything like that. But what you will

see is it will encourage future people

to engage with your content and send you

their success stories, how they have won

based on what you have shared. And

lastly, leverage user generated content.

UC is kind of the acronym that almost

everybody in the industry uses and so

that's probably what you're more

familiar with. I would encourage your

audience to create with you. And so what

this can look like is potentially you

put out a prompt encouraging your

audience to share an insight or story

based on the lessons and advice that you

share in your content. Then what you do

is you take those videos that they have

posted. Maybe it's to Tik Tok, Instagram

reels, and you can stitch them. You can

actually create content off the back of

your audience's content that they are

already creating. What this will do is

create a perpetual cycle of engagement.

This empowers your audience to want to

one create content with you, but also to

promote you to their audience. And no

audience is too small. Like even people

that have 300 followers, I want them

informing their 300 followers about my

brand. Now, I believe that there are

three pillars to community content. And

my hope is in sharing this, this just

allows you to come up with more ideas

within these three different pillars.

First one is educational content. This

is when we're teaching our community. We

help the community by solving their

biggest problems. The next one is

conversational content. The goal or

purpose of this is to engage the

audience. You want to make your audience

feel heard and involved in your content.

Again, we don't want this to just be a

one-way relationship. We want it to go

both ways. And number three, social

proof content. This is where, like we

talked about earlier, you can showcase

community wins as an example. You want

to be highlighting real stories from

your community and how what you're

putting out there is driving impact in

your community. So, we've gone over the

value of building a community and having

the community drive your content, but

how do you turn viewers into community

members? Well, first off, you're going

to want to make engagement the goal, not

just views. So, the way you do that is

you create content that invites them to

participate. This might be as simple as

literally just asking your community to

drop a fire emoji in the comments if

they found this clip useful. This could

also go so far as to literally ask them

to debate in the comments. So, what you

could do is you could share a

controversial take on something. Again,

not controversy for controversial sake,

but something that is counter what the

industry norm is. You could share that

and then your call to action could be

literally telling your audience, debate

whether or not you agree with this in

the comments below. Or you could go even

crazier and say, "I would love to know

your two cents on this. I'm going to be

engaging with some of you and going back

and forth. We can debate it in the

comments." Drive engagement in your

content. And second, please respond and

reward participation. People ask me,

"How do I increase engagement in my

content?" The number one thing that I

notice for most of the people that ask

this question is the three people that

are currently commenting on their

content, they're not responding to. So

like why on earth would you think more

people are going to start engaging with

your content if you're not even

responding to the ones who are? What you

want to do is set an example for future

people, future audience members,

somebody who's new that comes in. If

they see that you are more likely to

respond to comments, they are more

likely to comment. Go figure. People

don't like one-way conversations. They

love when creators, even big creators

especially, are responding to their

comments. What you're doing is you're

not only acknowledging the people that

are engaging and thanking them for that,

but again, you're giving signals to

other audience members that they can go

from becoming a viewer to an actual

community member. And the last one, I'm

I'm a huge fan of this. I love to create

inside jokes and shared language. I

believe that really strong communities

have very unique terminology and shared

language that they all understand and

outsiders do not. Think of any niche,

any interest that you have. Deep within

that community exists a lot of different

sayings that maybe your friends and

family do not understand. For example,

gym bros have bulking season and the

Harley community has all their jokes

about sportster riders. So, when you're

thinking about your community and your

niche, what's the inside joke? Whether

it's leveraging one that already exists

and implementing it in your content so

that you show people that you are an

insider, you get the inside jokes, you

understand the lingo, you speak their

language, or it might be creating your

own. There's so many different creators

who have their own little sayings that

people outside of the community don't

understand. The takeaway is either

leverage inside jokes and statements and

language that you know already exists

within your community and niche or

create your own. And now we've reached

the point in the course where we are

going to talk about scaling your

content. We've established how to pick

your medium, how to pick your preferred

platforms, everything, right? We've

given you a lot of different frameworks

and you've been consistently posting.

You're involving your audience. You're

doing all the right things. And now

we're at the point where we want to

scale the out of this thing, right?

We want to amplify your brand at a whole

another level. More content equals more

opportunities to engage, more

opportunities to attract, and more

opportunities to convert. But here's the

thing, scaling does not need to equate

to burning out or quitting early, right?

We want to build a process and system

that is sustainable and works for you.

Now, the key to making platform specific

content is actually recalling something

that I shared with you earlier, which is

the analogy of you are you and you show

up to multiple different circumstances,

events, situations as you, but you're

going to present yourself slightly

different given the context or the

environment that you are in. You're

going to speak to different topics or

use different vocabulary. Let's say I'm

going out to go riding with the boys,

right? I am going to talk in a slightly

different way than when I go and get

breakfast with my mom. I am still me,

but I'm going to emphasize different

parts of me and use different vocabulary

that is appropriate for the setting that

I am in. I view social media and the

different platforms the same way. You

are your brand, but you're going to show

up and emphasize different parts or

elements of your brand given the

platform you're on. You're also going to

use different lingo and language. you're

going to talk way differently on

LinkedIn than you are on Tik Tok. Now,

what you've probably been doing up to

this point is making content and then

deploying it to all the platforms. So,

let's say, for example, you made a

YouTube long- form video. You're

probably mining and pulling shorts from

that and then posting those shorts on

all the different platforms. And that

was a great start. That caused you to be

able to scale your brand to a certain

point. But right now, you're probably

hitting a ceiling. And the way to smash

through that ceiling is to now start

making those same clips but have a

different creator tackle it given their

knowledge and context on the platform

they're distributing it to. So what does

this look like? Well, one, it looks

massively inefficient because what

you're going to do is you're going to

provide the same source media to maybe

five different editors and they're all

going to cut it slightly differently to

make it contextual to Tik Tok versus

Instagram versus LinkedIn video because

all three of those platforms might

require a completely different hook.

Now, what you might find is that the

meat of the video stays roughly the

same, but the entry point into the meat

of the video, the hook might be

different because people are looking for

different things or solving different

problems on LinkedIn versus Tik Tok.

Just because you've been doing it one

way doesn't mean that that is how you

continue. Often times, the way you got

to one point is not the way you're going

to get to the next point. And so the

solution here is to take your team and

the creators that you have on your team

and reverse engineer their specific

skill sets and interests and assign them

the platform that lines up with their

strengths and interests. Cuz what you

want is you want them to be living,

eating, and breathing this platform. I

remember when Gary assigned TikTok to me

and we were at 300,000 followers and

literally what he had me do is the first

week I didn't make any content for it. I

sat eight hours a day for a whole week

straight just scrolling through Tik Tok.

That is like doom scrolling on another

level except I was actually

taking note and learning what people

were doing on the platform that worked.

And what I was trying to do is extract

the insights that could be applied to

Gary's content. So at the beginning of

this section, what we did is we outlined

prioritizing two or three platforms. But

now we're probably at the point where,

yeah, you still are prioritizing, let's

say, those three platforms, but you're

probably redistributing the content on

another three. So, what you're going to

do is you're going to take your top

three platforms and your bottom three

platforms, and you're going to assign

those out to your team cuz more than

likely, you don't have like 10 people on

your team. You might have three editors

that you can assign to these platforms.

So, what you do is you give your best

editor, your number one platform, and

your number four platform, and so on and

so forth. Your second best editor gets

platform number two and platform number

five. Okay? And then again, the third

gets number three and number six. And so

what we're going to do is we're going to

tell them to spend 85% of their time,

effort, and energy making platform

native content for their top priority

platform. And then they're going to

spend the remaining 15% trying to

experiment with platform native content

for their second priority platform.

Notice that is a huge discrepancy. 85%

and 15%. Because we have identified that

these three platforms, your top three,

are what are actually driving the

economics of your business. They're

driving awareness to your art. They're

driving awareness to your offer. And so

that is where we're going to put all of

our effort. So here's an example of how

this is actually ran. Let's say Angela

is our best editor. Okay? So we assign

Instagram to Angela. Angela is going to

spend 85% of her time during the week

creating Instagram native content. She's

literally making content specifically

and only with Instagram in mind. Now,

could this be redistributed to other

platforms? Of course, absolutely. But

you want her thinking through the

mindset of the Instagram audience that

you have. And then she's going to spend

the remaining 15%. Let's say Tik Tok we

identify as number four. Okay, cool. 15%

of her time is going towards making

platform native content for Tik Tok.

What this probably will end up looking

like is maybe creating seven original

pieces of content for Instagram a week

and maybe one or two for Tik Tok. And

that's fine. Again, what we're doing is

we're taking the Eye of Sauron approach

that I mentioned earlier and we're

delegating that out to the team now. So,

it's not just you or the head of your

content team doing that. You're actually

giving the power to your individual

contributors on the team to do the same.

They're prioritizing the platform that

drives the most results and then they

are testing and around with the

secondary platform because as we know

social evolves, things change and we

never know if Tik Tok is all of a sudden

going to jump in priority. On one of the

teams that I built, we had gotten to a

point where we had already optimized

quite a bit on the platforms. But when

we made this change, an already massive

massive output team that was getting

billions of impressions every year, we

were able to see a 1.5x return. Now,

that might not sound like that special.

Everyone talks about 2x, 10xing,

100xing, but what you got to realize is

when you are at the top. 0.1% of content

creators, a 1.5x increase is

massive. A great analogy for this, if

you know uh powerlifting in any way,

shape, or form, when you are early in

the days and you first start lifting,

you can be doubling your lifts every

couple of months, but then once you get

to a point where you're like maybe

squatting 6 or 700 lb, uh you're not

going to be doubling that, right? If you

get a 5% increase in your lift, that

might be the difference between a

standard lift and a world record. Now,

why is this actually effective? I think

I've given a fairly good argument for

it. But in case you're still on the edge

and still don't totally feel like you've

been convinced, here's a couple reasons.

This allows for each of your creators to

have more focus. Instead of spreading

them thin and having them make what I

would call vanilla content, something

that you're making and hoping will work

on all the platforms, they don't give a

about the other platforms. They are

focusing the majority of their efforts

on one primary platform. And what is so

beautiful about this is not only do they

learn what the audience wants, they

become very closely tied to the actual

performance of the content. When you're

a shorts editor and you make a clip, it

is very difficult to continue making

clips and track the performance of that

short across five to 10 different

platforms. But if you own one channel,

you actually are able to keep way better

track of the performance and the

creators end up being held more

accountable. They understand how the

clip is actually performing. This is the

beautiful marriage of creative and data.

And what you want is you actually

traditional creative has data and

strategy in a completely different house

than creative. That is like the

traditional agency model. What you want

is you want them to be as close as

possible. the further they are away, the

less that the data is actually informing

the creative and then we're just making

subjective calls rather than informing

our decisions off of what the audience

has told us they want more of. Another

reason why this works is this will

actually lead to greater retention with

your team. Why? Because they're starting

to see greater success with their

content. It's a very powerful

reinforcement loop. They make the

content, they see how it performs, it

does better. Amazing. They take the

insights from that and that informs the

next creative they make and it creates

this incredible flywheel that is

unstoppable. The other thing that this

will end up doing is it actually

incentivizes your audience to follow you

on multiple platforms because you're not

posting the same at the

same time. You're actually posting

different content at different times.

And so if I look at your brand on

Instagram and then 5 minutes later go to

LinkedIn and your post is at the top,

it's not the same Anytime that

you're posting the same content at the

same time to all the different

platforms, you deincentivize your

audience to follow you on all these

platforms. Why would they do it? They

they have no reason to. I just need to

follow you on Instagram and I'll get

everything that you put out. Versus, if

you're making individual content per

platform, well, then I am very

incentivized to follow you everywhere

because I'm going to gain different

insights and different perspectives

depending on what platform I'm on. The

other added benefit is you create a team

of strategists, not just creatives. They

start to learn how to think

strategically. And what you're actually

doing is you're training future leaders

of your team. A lot of editors are maybe

a little bit more on the meek side and

not as willing to share strong opinions

because maybe they don't feel they have

the data to back it up. Well, this puts

the data in their front lap.

This makes it so available for them and

they start thinking differently. And

what you'll find is two, three, couple

of individuals on your team are going to

rise above and shine. And you're going

to see that they have more skills than

just being a creator. And what you might

find is that this individual is able to

be in a leadership role on your team in

the future. This provides them the

opportunity to see that that is a

potential for their career. Whereas

before, they may have always thought

they were an editor. I can't even tell

you how many different editors that I've

led that once we did this, they were

like, "Oh my goodness, I always thought

I was just going to be an editor." And

now I see like maybe I want to be a a

strategy lead or I want to be a creative

director. And it opens up this whole

other opportunity, which is amazing for

them and provides value to them and

their career, but it also is extremely

valuable to you because what you want as

you scale is to have leaders that

understand your brand and ideally have

been there for a long time, right?

Consistency is a powerful thing with

your team. Now, the next question you

might be wondering is, okay, how do I

determine who gets what platform? How do

I evaluate the creators on my team and

what platform they should own? A very

basic version of this is just look at

how they operate and how they

communicate. Does the creator match the

tone of the platform? For example, on

Tik Tok, do they understand current

humor and current trends that are

existing? Right? Tik Tok for more than I

think any other platform has like their

own language that they speak. Maybe this

is me being a millennial and just

getting old now and maybe it's not just

Tik Tok, but you want somebody who

understands that and is up todate with

culture and what people are saying so

that they can participate in a way that

is relevant to the users on that

platform. Another example is LinkedIn.

Do they have a deep understanding of the

subject matter that you are speaking to?

oftentimes you're going to want somebody

specifically on this platform that

actually understands the message and the

content that you are putting out. If

they are just repurposing what you put

out from other platforms, that's decent.

But if they actually have a deep

understanding, they're going to pull

more out of you that is what the

audience on that platform is actually

seeking. And for YouTube, honestly, my

measurement on YouTube is does somebody

consume a shitload of YouTube content? I

truly believe that if they're living on

YouTube, they love and are deeply

following a couple of different

YouTubers. They're going to understand

the best practices and what is working,

but also they're going to see the

evolutions that are occurring in real

time and be able to take those learnings

and apply it to the content you're

making. What you don't want is somebody

who only consumes Netflix and Instagram

editing your YouTube content. You want

somebody who is deep in the weeds of the

YouTube community and understands what

people are doing there and what the

audience is preferring. For example, you

want an editor who is noticing that

vlogs are having a sudden resurgence

over the last year. There's more people

making vlog content. Now, those vlogs

look very different than they did about

5 or 6 years ago. And so you want

somebody who's noticing that emerging

trend and can act on it without using

their preconceived notions or what used

to work in 2014 or 2015 when vlogging

was really big. You want them to

understand the nuance and the difference

between what a 2015 vlog looked like and

a 2025 vlog on YouTube looks like. So

we've evaluated the creators for the

platform. Amazing. Now, what we need to

do is make sure that we have a great

data tracking system in place so that

the creators can know if what they're

making is working or if it's not. And

even more than that, so that you can

know if what they're making is working

or not. Something that I've observed

with a lot of different teams is that we

say things like, "This video got 400k

views," or "This video got 10,000

likes." and people celebrate, but we

don't really know what that means.

Because what we don't know is what the

average is and how this is either

underperforming from the average or

overperforming from the average. In the

very beginning, when it's a small,

nimble team, everyone knows what the

averages are, okay? And so, everyone

knows like, wo, if we got 100,000 views

on this, that's crazy. That's way more

than we normally get. But eventually you

get to a point where you're putting out

so much and you have so many

different platforms and you have

multiple different creators that you no

longer really know what your team means

or what people on your team mean when

they're saying we got 100k views. And so

what we want to establish is benchmarks

and then we want to report against those

benchmarks. And so the way I like to do

this is I like to create what we call a

multiplier sheet. I am not a software

developer, so I haven't put together

some like software tool for this, but we

do this in Google Sheets. And it's very

simple. In the beginning, what you're

going to get is what I like to call

directionally correct, not

scientifically accurate, but again, it's

directionally correct. It's going to

move us in the right direction. What

you're going to do is you're going to

review the last 75 to 90 days of your

content. And this is per platform. So,

let's pick Instagram, for example.

You're going to go back and review the

last 75 days of content on your

Instagram channel and I want you to pull

the median. Okay? So, we're going for

averages. Use the median, not the mean.

Some teams can do and get away with the

mean, but a lot of you probably have

some posts that are massive outliers and

this will tip the scales and make all of

your content look like it's

underperforming and not allow you to

have a proper benchmark to establish or

grade yourself against. And so what

you're going to do is you're going to

grab the median of the last 75 days. And

I would encourage you to do this for

different formats, right? So do this for

reals, do this for carousels, you can do

this for uh static posts if you do that.

You could do it as as an average across

all of it, but it gets way more

scientific if you break it down

according to the medium that you're

tracking. And so what you're going to do

is you're going to establish what that

median is for the last 75 days. That is

now your benchmark. Moving forward,

you're going to report performance of

individual pieces against that benchmark

using a multiplier. So, let's say, for

example, your average is 100,000 views

on Instagram reels. After you have

established that, your first post up

gets 150,000 views. That would be a 1.5x

multiplier. What this does is it gets

the entire team on the same page. We're

all speaking the same language. we're

seeing it from the same handbook.

Instead of saying, "Oh, this got 150,000

views." No, it's this was a 1.5x. This

was a great clip. It did really well.

The benefit of this is you track this

over time and you start to see what

topics, what formats don't perform as

well. It becomes very clear, like

unbelievably clear for you to see. And

what you can have your team do is start

focusing on making more of the that

works and less of the that doesn't.

Now, a technical note for you is I would

recommend for most platforms waiting 11

days after you post it before you report

on the performance. Sometimes what

you'll find is uh a piece of content

might, you know, do decent for the first

2 or 3 days, but then eventually it

actually pops. Something that's

happening a lot more on social is

content does well for a few days and

then maybe like 7 days in it'll pop. And

so you want to give it enough time to

experience the life cycle of the

platform. The other beauty of this is if

you share these sheets across the team,

the person who is running your Tik Tok

can start to see things that are

performing really well on Instagram.

Let's say you have a 3x clip that went

up on Instagram. I think that would be

very interesting for the person who's

running Tik Tok to test it on Tik Tok.

And what you can start to do is

calibrate the crossover performance

between platforms because again this

makes it far easier for you to know what

success looks like rather than saying

well this clip got 150k views on

Instagram and it did really well and

then we posted it on Tik Tok and it only

got 50K. Well maybe your average on Tik

Tok is 10,000 views in which case it was

a 5x multiplier. And so when we use the

same nomenclature, the same language, we

are all on the same page and we can

start to make more educated decisions.

Now, what I said at the top is that this

isn't scientifically accurate. It's more

directionally correct. And the reason

why is because you just pulled the last

75 days and some of those posts have

been up for 75 days. And so it's not the

same amount of time that you're

reporting on. So what you're going to

find is it's going to take a little bit

of time to establish a scientific

benchmark. Use it though. This will help

you go in the right direction. What you

should be doing is every month, make

sure that you update what your benchmark

is. This way, you're always measuring

against the new median rather than a

median that may have happened 6 months

ago. This allows you to continue raising

the bar and instead of you artificially

coming in and saying, "All right, the

new benchmark is we have to hit 500k

views all the time." No, your benchmark

is moving up according to how your

content is performing. And one thing to

call out is uh I wouldn't recommend

doing this for YouTube necessarily

because there are actually tools out

there that already do this. There's one

of 10.com, there's view stats, and I'm

sure there's millions of others that

will pop up over the next couple of

months. But as of right now, I am not

aware of any tool that does this

automatically for your Instagram, Tik

Tok, etc. So, typically what you'll find

is you have to do it manually for short

form platforms and then your YouTube you

can utilize these tools that do it

automatically for you. It's an extremely

extremely powerful tool. And on the

topic of data, I would recommend that

you make this part of the culture of

your team. You want to ensure that

everybody is viewing data as their god.

This is how they make decisions. This is

the framework that they operate under.

It's not us coming up with subjective

creative ideas. I would allow, as a side

note, a little bit of room for that,

right? like maybe 10% of your content is

just new ideas that the team is coming

up with, but 90% of it should be backed

by data. And so I would emphasize in

your hiring process to ensure that you

are bringing people onto the team that

actually place an emphasis on data. And

you can take this even a step further by

actually hiring somebody who maybe not

their full-time job, but a main part of

their job and a main part of their

experience coming into the job is

tracking, analyzing, and then

disseminating the information and the

takeaways they acquire from reviewing

the data. I remember uh on my last team,

there was an individual that we brought

onto the team and he completely changed

how he viewed data. I I'm talking it was

a complete game changer. all of a sudden

everybody on the team started actually

carrying and tracking the data of the

platform they were owning. And so the

moment he came in, we had a huge shift

in the culture. So I would highly

recommend if you currently have a team

and nobody on your team is a data nerd,

that's what you want. Go for the data

nerd. They are going to accelerate the

rate at which you grow and scale your

content. A little pro tip for you is

it's not a boulder that builds a

building. It's brick by brick. And so I

would encourage you to make a list of

the bricks that you have noticed lead to

better content outcomes. And what you

can end up doing is having a massive

internal playbook that is specific to

your content and your team. Your brickby

brick list won't necessarily look the

same as any other teams. So, as much as

I would love to say download our

brick-by- brick list, it's actually far

more contextual to the type of content,

the niche you're in, and the platforms

you're choosing to deploy your content

on. But I would really encourage you

instead of just being like, "Oh, that's

cool." and hoping that you remember it,

actually build a list of your bricks

with your team. And then this becomes a

training tool when you onboard new

editors to maintain that level of

excellence and level of performance. And

you know what? it. Let's throw in

one more pro tip because I think this is

really powerful. Something I learned in

the last two years that was a real

gamecher for me is if it doesn't change

your actions, don't track it. The amount

of teams that I've met with that have

these massive analytic tools that are

tracking every single kind of metric you

could imagine. I mean, there's

so many of those, right? I mean, that's

pretty much every team. You probably

have somebody on your team that has some

sort of crazy analytics tool that

they're tracking every single little

metric that you can imagine. But here's

the thing. How much of that is actually

going to change what the team does? And

if it doesn't change what the team does,

why are we tracking it? What benefit

does it have? If anything, what it does

is it gives information overload and

makes it much more difficult to know

what decisions to make off of the data

because you don't know what you're

looking at. you have a million different

things that you're tracking rather than

tracking two to four metrics that

actually indicate what you should do

next. And the next one, and this is

going to sound a little aggressive, but

I I like to say some things uh that are

a little bit more polarizing every once

in a while. the social media

manager. We don't need that. The people

that you just assigned those platforms

to should be the ones that are managing

the platform. They're doing the posting.

They're going to gain far more insights.

They're going to be tied to the data

like we've talked about and they're

going to understand in real time how the

content they're creating is performing.

Now, a couple of different little pro

tips for you on how you can go about

making your content in an efficient

manner that allows you to do this for a

long time. Cuz like we've talked about

throughout this course, this is only

effective if we stick with it. Build a

content machine. Okay? Instead of

hustling your way to success, build a

system and process that allows you to

put out content consistently and

continue to provide value to your

audience rather than being kind of an

inconsistent spotty creator. First thing

that I recommend doing is batching and

scheduling. If you are a very busy

individual, I recommend actually

batching your content. Now, I do believe

that there is a lot of power into real

time content. You have the idea and

within 24 hours you film it. But for

some of you, actually probably a lot of

you watching this, that's not realistic

with where you're at in your career, in

your business, in your endeavors. And so

what you need to do is you need to give

yourself the system that is realistic

for you in this current season. And more

than likely, that looks like blocking

off a Thursday or Friday, the whole day

to film. This is where you need to go

back to the section where I talk about

creating a conducive environment to

extract the best content. Because if

you're going to take a whole day to

batch content, I will tell you cuz I am

doing it right now, it's exhausting. And

so you need the right environment to be

able to continue and roll with the

momentum so that you can make high value

and useful content. Next, what I want

you to do is create a content assembly

line. Step one is ideation. This is when

you are researching and brainstorming

the topics that you are going to create

your content around. Step two is the

creation. This is when you're drafting

the script. you're hitting record and

you're filming it. Step three is

editing. Now, this is where, as we've

discussed, you are optimizing the edit

per platform that you're distributing.

So again, those top three platforms that

you're prioritizing, those individuals

are each editing that content for their

platform. Step four is distribution.

This is when you post and ideally

engage. Again, the individuals who are

managing those platforms and creating

for it, they're the ones who are posting

it on that platform. Now you have to

figure out whether you want your team to

engage on your behalf or you engage

yourself. I would encourage you highly

it should be you. I think there's a

massive amount of value for me as an

audience member knowing that if I

comment on your post and you respond,

it's actually you. And I would actually

prefer you do that at the detriment of

high volume engagement. So maybe that

means that you only respond to five

comments a week. That's a little bit

extreme, but maybe it's only five. Well,

I think that is a higher value if it is

always you responding to the comments

rather than your team responding to

every single comment on your post. A

tiny little hack around this that I will

recommend that you can do is you can

have your team make a team account. For

Gary Vaynerchuk, we did this with a team

Gary Vee account and this was very

effective. Many times if he was

extremely busy or we were posting and

then he was going to hop on an

international flight where he wouldn't

have Wi-Fi. Okay. Well, he would tell

the team, "Go in under the Team Gary

account and I want you to respond to

every single comment." Sometimes he

would literally have us do every single

comment. And as you may be aware, he

gets thousands of comments. So, it was

very extensive. But this was a very

effective way to do it. The audience

knew that this was his team and there

was no funny business. There was no bait

and switch where we were pretending to

be Gary. No, we were just very clearly

his team engaging with the audience. And

then finally, step five is analyze. This

is where you're reviewing the

performance and you're taking note of

what you can do to improve it in the

future. The next section is create room

for experimentation. The biggest mistake

that I see in content teams, they stop

experimenting. It actually happens

pretty slowly. At first, you're

innovating. You're creating new content

and breaking through ceilings and making

stuff the industry has never seen. But

what ends up happening is you start

learning what works and you double down

on that, which is right. But then

complacency and comfort sets in. The

problem is the algorithm doesn't get

comfortable and it doesn't get

complacent. It's always shifting. Now,

am I encouraging you to constantly try

and chase the algorithm? No. But the

reality is is that your content is going

to be served in a different way whenever

they make a change. And so, you have to

adapt to that change. What got you to

where you are now will not get you to

the next level. The unfortunate reality

is is usually by the time that a team

realizes this, it's almost too late.

They have built a culture of doubling

down only on what they're doing and

never trying new And often times,

as much as I've been pushing databacked

ideiation and databacked content, a lot

of times true innovation has no data to

back it. So what is the solution to

overcome this hurdle and this huge

problem that I see in many different

teams? You need to bake experimentation

into your process. This needs to be an

intentional thing that you actually

systematize and allow your team to do on

a fairly consistent basis. What I like

to do is I like to encourage my teams to

drive innovation through what I call

content hackathons. Honestly, most teams

aren't failing because of bad ideas.

They're failing because they don't have

any new ideas. And this is why I

recommend either a monthly or quarterly

content hackathon. Here's how I run

them. Either a monthly cadence or a

quarterly cadence. You're going to

dedicate an entire day to experimenting

and for the team to make something

completely new and completely different

than what they do in their day-to-day.

So, it starts at 9:00 a.m. And what

you're going to do is you're going to do

a kickoff call. It's usually 15 to 30

minutes. It doesn't need to be anything

fancy or long. What you're doing is

you're giving context to the team

because maybe you're scaling and you

have new members on the team this

quarter than last quarter. And so you

need to make sure that everybody is on

the same page. And what you're going to

do is you are going to give them a safe

space to try anything. What I would

literally do is I would say I don't care

how anything you make today performs. I

want you to create something that you've

not done before on the team. Something

that is not part of your dayto-day. And

typically, I would advise people to only

make one or two pieces of content. I'm

not going for high volume here. We're

going for something completely

disruptive and so different, so

off-the-wall, that it's either going to

absolutely crush or completely flop. And

either way is fine because that is what

you are incentivizing. Innovation, not

performance. And a little fun thing that

I like to do, too, is I like to send

everybody on the team gift cards to pay

for their lunch. If we're all in the

same place, cool. I'll order lunch for

everybody. And the reason why is I just

don't want them to have to think about

that. I want them focusing on this

innovative content they're making all

day. And so what we do is we do the

kickoff call and then they all go and

start ripping away at their content. And

typically what I like to do is give them

basically from 9:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. to

create. And what I do is I put together

a slide deck where they all have access

edit access and they are supposed to on

their slide upload their content.

They're going to present it to the

entire team at the end of the day. So 4

PM hits and usually I'll give them a 15

or 30 minute window to upload their

content and embed it into the slide. At

4:30, we're going to have a 1 hour or 1

and 1/2 hour call with the entire team

where each individual is going to

present what they made. Now I don't want

them to just click play on their video.

I want them to explain why they did what

they did. And then what happens is after

we've reviewed everybody's content,

instead of having the incentive be the

performance of the content, have the

incentive be the amount of innovation

that occurred. And the best way to

measure that is the team. They all know

what you are making on a daily basis.

And so what I like to do is have the

team vote on who won, who made the most

creative or innovative or completely

off-the-wall piece of content that we

should then run publicly. And I like to

give a prize for it. So like often times

I'll do like an Amazon gift card or or

something of that nature that rewards

them for pushing the envelope. Some of

the best content formats that ended up

being top performers for months or even

years for us came from content

hackathons. I can't recommend this

enough. It is amazing. Not only is it

really effective, the team loves it.

It's an entire day where they get to try

new and there's no consequence to

them making something that doesn't

perform well. What you're actually doing

is creating an environment for freedom,

innovation, and creativity to flourish.

Now, content hackathons are great, but I

want to give you a framework that you

can actually utilize for ongoing

experimentation that will empower your

team to not only make what they know

works, but also spend a little bit of

time innovating and trying new Cuz

ultimately, not every single piece of

content should be an experiment. But if

you never test new things, you will

certainly plateau. So, this is the

702010 framework. 70% of your content

you want to be proven that you know

works. This is the bread and butter.

This is what you know consistently you

can put out and will perform well and

your audience will resonate with it.

This is the content that reliably drives

engagement and conversions. Now 20% is

small improvements and iterations to the

content you know works. This looks like

minor tweaks to content that is already

hitting with your audience. This looks

like maybe adjusting the hooks, trying a

new call to action, or testing a new

format with the same subject matter. And

lastly, 10% should be saved for pure

experimentation. This is where the

breakthroughs actually happen. It looks

like trying completely new formats, new

topics or messaging, or completely

different creative approaches to how you

make the content. The unfortunate

reality is most teams get stuck on the

70%. And I understand why. It's

comfortable, but comfort doesn't build

iconic brands. The best teams out there

always ensure that they have at least

one foot in the 10% zone. To wrap this

up, innovation isn't optional. It's a

requirement to scale. Trends will shift,

platforms will evolve, and audiences are

going to move on. If you're not creating

space for experimentation, you're

setting your team up to be in reaction

mode rather than leading the pack.

Because the teams that adapt first are

the teams that win. And the last thing

that I want to leave you with on this

section is the scaling mindset. So many

people quit too early. Mainly because

they didn't have a good process and

framework in place that allowed them to

do this ongoing and enjoy it. So they

quit early. The people who win in the

content game are the ones who stay

consistent and stick with it for a very

very long time. Also scaling is about

iteration not perfection. This is

observing, learning, and adapting over

time. Progress over perfection. And

lastly, let the audience determine what

is great. And the more you post, the

more data you get on what your audience

says is

great. All right, so we've covered

brand, we've covered content, and now we

are on to team. And I would argue this

is actually one of the most important

parts of the whole puzzle. And

personally, it is probably my favorite

section of this entire course. This is

where I get a lot of enjoyment and

fulfillment uh for myself in my career

is building teams and helping to develop

them. And so, a couple quick things that

I want to share with you before we

really dive in on why your team is

everything. Ultimately, your team is not

just there to execute, right? They are a

multiplier of the vision that you have.

A strong team doesn't just help you

scale. They are there to help you build

something far bigger than you could ever

do alone. Now, a lot of people watching

this probably have never built a team.

Definitely not a media or content team.

A couple things to keep in mind that

will help us as we go through this

section are one, you don't hire just for

skills. I actually emphasize hiring more

for culture than skills. I find it a lot

easier to train skills than culture fit.

You want to make sure that they align

with your brand, where you're wanting to

go. So, where you are right now and what

you're wanting to accomplish and the

subject matter that you're going to be

speaking about. They should be

interested and curious about those

things. You want to make sure that

you're hiring based off of platform

goals that you have. And so you want to

identify what are the different

platforms that we are emphasizing this

next year or years and build the team

around that not just your traditional

videographer, editor, designer, audio

engineer roles. And you want to make

sure that they fit into your overall

creative process. If you don't like a

lot of preparation for film days and you

like to go off the cuff, then you need

to make sure you're hiring people that

are comfortable with that and able to

ask you good questions to prompt more

information that comes out of you. And

number one is that we don't hire just to

fill roles. We hire to solve problems.

So, if there isn't a problem that you

can diagnose, then there shouldn't be a

role that we're hiring for this

non-existent problem. Ultimately, what

you end up doing, and I'll get into this

further in a little bit, but you end up

bringing somebody on that ultimately has

no purpose on the team. And that is

shitty for both parties. Another one is

that a bad hire doesn't just slow you

down, it massively slows you down. it

takes months to recover and you lose a

ton of money in the process. And so what

we're going to do in a little bit is

we're going to walk through my entire

hiring funnel. And I really encourage

you pay close attention during this

section because what we've talked about

brand content, that's super important.

But mistakes made on hiring your team

are going to cost you hundreds of

thousands of dollars and are going to

become a massive headache and ultimately

it causes a lot of people to write off

this whole team thing. I'm just going to

do it myself with one other person.

That's not the way that we want to do

this. But we want to do it correctly

from the start so that we build the

correct foundation. And lastly, the best

teams aren't built overnight. They

require patience, intention, and

investment in people who align with the

desired outcome and the brand that you

are building. So with that, let's dive

in. All right. So first, before we hire

anybody, let's define what we need.

Okay? So define your needs before

hiring. There's what you need and

there's what you want. We are only going

to hire on the prior. What you need. A

lot of people hire way too quickly and

they hire for roles that they think

they're going to need. They've maybe

heard people mention like that you need

this D and what they don't do is they

don't hire based on constraints. What

you want to do is look at your process

and what is causing the biggest

constraint. For example, before we dive

into this, if you are filming a bunch of

content but nothing's getting edited,

there is a very clear and obvious

constraint. It's editing. So, what would

you hire? An editor. If, on the other

hand, you're always getting videos done

in post-production, but you don't have

enough in the pipeline. So, the editor

is sitting there twiddling their thumbs

being like, "What the do I do?"

Maybe you hire a videographer or a

content strategist that can help you

ideulate and come up with new ideas to

film. We are hiring based on problems

and constraints we have in the process,

not off of some random perceived idea of

what we should have on the team. Now, to

avoid making the mistake of hiring just

what you want or what you think you need

versus hiring off of problems you have,

ask yourself these three questions. What

tasks are taking the most amount of time

away from high value work? Okay, so an

example of this is if you're a content

strategist but spend 50% of your time

editing videos, you might need an

editor. That's probably not the best use

of your time and skills, okay? Because

ultimately, you were hired to be the

strategist. And if you're splitting your

time, sure, in the beginning, you're

going to have to do that as you're

building the team, but eventually we get

to a point where we're going to want to

specialize. And so, if you are finding

that you were hired or you hired someone

for a very specific role and they're

fulfilling multiple roles, the way to

scale up or improve efficiency is to

hire somebody to do that role. In this

case, hiring an editor to relieve time

for your content strategist. Question

number two, what's slowing down

execution? And I hit it already at the

top, but I'm going to hammer it again

because it's really important. If you're

finding that you're filming all of this

content and then it's just not going

out, it's not getting done, you need to

hire an editor. If you are always ready

to film, always ready to edit, but

you're sitting there twiddling your

thumbs, not knowing what the to

actually film, than a content strategist

or ideation strategist, whatever you

want to call them, that is going to be

the critical role to bring into your

team. Whatever the bottleneck and

constraint is, that is what you want to

hire around. This is how we actually

scale rapidly. And the last question

you're going to ask yourself is, what

content opportunities are currently

being missed due to lack of resources?

So, for example, if we identify that

YouTube is your number one most

important platform and you're posting

one video a month and your goal is to

get to two, but the current bandwidth of

the team only allows for one. Well, then

we're going to go up to the question

above and we're going to find out which

part of the process is our constraint

and then we are going to hire for that.

Ultimately, it's all boiling down to

hiring around the problem, the

bottleneck, the constraint that you have

on the team. This is how we're going to

scale fast. If you hire five editors,

but editing isn't your constraint, you

just brought on a lot of cost for no

gain because you don't have enough input

to match the output the editors can

accomplish. Please prioritize hiring for

bottlenecks over convenience. Just

because you're really good at hiring

videographers doesn't mean that you need

to hire five of them. You want to make

sure that when you're hiring, you're

hiring to create more leverage, not just

offloading busy work. In fact,

oftentimes what you can find is as you

bring more people on, you can actually

eliminate the busy work because you

start to recognize the big tasks that

actually move the lever for the team.

Ultimately, we're not just trying to

lighten everyone's load. We're trying to

accelerate execution and the impact that

each individual has for the collective

team, which drives bigger impact for the

brand at large. Now, a huge mistake I

see a lot of people make is they hire

for general skills, not platform

specific needs. What do I mean by that?

Well, there is this very interesting

split in our world that is occurring

right now. You have great DPS, people

that are great at filming beautiful

videos. You have editors that are

incredible at editing these beautiful

commercials or these long form films

that you see going out on Netflix, etc.

And they are incredible editors at their

craft. But what a lot of people don't

recognize is a great editor for a

Netflix film is not a great editor for a

YouTube video. They are very different

skills and very different needs. Same

for the videographer. A DP that works on

some like Amazon or Hulu documentary is

going to have a very different set of

skills than somebody who is filming,

let's say, a vlog for one of the

YouTubers, one of the big YouTubers

online. Okay? Completely different

needs. And right now we're still in the

early stages of really understanding the

nuance and difference between those kind

of creatives. And so what you get a lot

of times is people hiring somebody who

is a great graphic designer and they

make amazing brochures. They're so good

at designing your logo, your website,

but they suck at YouTube

thumbnails because it is a totally

different skill set. And so what we want

to do is identify what are the platforms

that you are focusing on, which we've

already done. And once we've done that,

then we want to build the team around

those specific needs. If you're not

doing a lot of graphic design work,

brochures, business cards, flyers,

website updates, then you don't need a

traditional graphic designer. If all

they're doing is YouTube thumbnails,

then actually typically those

individuals do not have a traditional

graphic design background because a lot

of YouTube thumbnail best practices slap

in the face of traditional graphic

design best practices. Now, another

version of this is, and this is the

funniest one, people being like, "All

right, we're going to post some content

on social media, so we're going to hire

a social media manager." This is the

worst thing in the world. If

they're a generalist, if they are great

at all of the platforms, they suck at

all of the platforms. The reality is is

in 2025, there are very few people on

planet Earth, I would say less than

.001% that actually understand at a

master level all of the different

platforms. It'd be impossible.

They're evolving all the time. And so,

what you're going to actually find that

you want is you want channel specific

managers, not a social media manager. So

instead of hiring a social media manager

that oversees all your different

platforms, maybe what you're going to do

is in the beginning because you can't

afford to hire a manager for all five of

the platforms that you're on. Maybe what

you do is you make sure that your

creatives that you bring in emphasize

one of those platforms so that they have

a greater understanding than you do of

how YouTube works or Instagram or

LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever the new

one in 2026 is. Now, on the contrary, if

LinkedIn is where the majority of your

business results occur, where a lot of

conversions happen, where a lot of your

customers are, and a lot of interesting

conversations happen, well, I would

actually recommend hiring a LinkedIn

writer. Again, notice I didn't say

copywriter, just general. I said

LinkedIn writer. Hire them before a

video editor. Like, if you look at how

we approached content for Rston in 2025,

we started posting on LinkedIn before

any other platform. And so we emphasized

that. We started working with a LinkedIn

writer uh freelancer and instead of

making video content right away, we

actually emphasized that because I had a

feeling that that would generate a good

amount of leads for our business. And it

did. We made sure to align our hiring

with our actual needs. So as an example,

instead of hiring a generalist, you

might hire a YouTube editor and

immediately get 2x the content output.

You might then bring on a short form

video editor to maximize repurposing

that long- form content. Ultimately, a

lot of the times we're trying to build a

scenario where the individual, the

talent on camera isn't spending all

their time creating content. So maybe

for a while you have the long form that

you're doing and the editor does that.

They 2x the output and then the short

form editors are just utilizing that

same media, that same footage and

repurposing it, but you're getting two,

three, four, five times the amount of

impressions you would if you were just

doing the long form. Then maybe you hire

a platform strategist. And notice I'm

saying a platform strategist, not social

media strategist, because what you want

to do is you want to make sure they are

specifically tailored to the platforms

you're prioritizing. Now what you might

find in the beginning is you need to

hire somebody who is a gangster at

YouTube. They understand LinkedIn and

you know they dabble with Instagram.

That's fine. But you just want to make

sure that they are prioritizing and more

proficient in one. The

generalist not what you want. If it's

not obvious by now, the key

takeaway is always hire for the highest

impact content first. Whatever platform

you're getting the most traction on,

make sure you hire around that. and

whatever platform you're hiring around,

hire for whatever the biggest constraint

in the process for creating for that

platform is. So now we've defined what

the roles are that we need and and why

we need them and we're being very

intentional with how we're hiring them

and what problems we're trying to solve

with these hires. Now we got to actually

do the hiring. So let's streamline the

process. Just like we were defining our

needs, we are now going to define the

role clearly. One of the biggest

mistakes I see people make when they're

hiring a creative uh for their team is

just they don't know what they're

actually looking for. Maybe they know

the role and they know the problem, but

then they haven't articulated the

specific needs that they need to solve.

Let's say you're hiring a videographer

and you're going to be making uh vlog

content around motorcycles, right? You

hire this videographer, you know that

you're going to be filming vlog content,

so they got to be proficient at that.

You know it's going to be motorcycle

content. So, okay, you want them to be

at least somewhat interested in the

subject matter, but then what if you are

somebody who is only willing to film

early early in the morning, like 4:00

a.m. to 8:00 a.m. or 8:00 p.m. to

midnight, and you have those very

specific needs. If you have not

articulated that in your job

description, you are going to get a lot

of people that apply and go through the

interview process and waste your time

that are not willing to work within

those hours. And so you need to really

sit down and clearly articulate what are

all the needs, not just the function,

not just the subject matter, but also

what are the ancillary needs that you

have that are unique to you. So, a

couple of questions you can ask yourself

before you start looking for candidates

are the following. Is this role about

creating, managing, or analyzing

content? An example is that a YouTube

editor is creating content, but a

content strategist is managing and

optimizing distribution. Very key

distinction there. So, we want to make

sure we understand what their function,

what their role is. Number two, are we

at the point in our team, in our

company, in our brand where we can

actually hire somebody who is focused on

a single platform or are we still in the

early stage where we need somebody who

can work across multiple platforms?

Again, from what I said earlier, you

want to always make sure that you are

hiring somebody who is a specialist, but

in the beginning, you can't hire people

that are only going to do one thing.

It's just impossible. So you hire a

specialist who is willing to play the

role of a generalist and they do end up

taking on multiple platforms in the

beginning. This needs to be clearly

defined and articulated not only for

yourself but for the candidates. Number

three is how does this role contribute

to the bigger picture. This is really

important because one you want to know

it so that you can justify paying this

person but also you want to always be

tying what the individual once you hire

them what they are doing to the big

picture to the vision to how the company

how the brand is scaling and growing. If

you do that it gives them way bigger

purpose and allows them to see

themselves in that role in that

organization for a lot longer. And

again, please remember, I'm just going

to keep emphasizing this throughout it

because it's so important. Every hire

should be brought on to remove a

bottleneck, to solve a problem, and

allow the team to execute faster and

more effectively. All right, cool. So,

we've defined what we need. We've

defined the role. Now, it's time for

everybody's favorite activity, which is

writing a job description. Now, I say

that sarcastically, but I actually, for

whatever reason, I don't know what the

is wrong with my brain, I love

writing job descriptions. I love the

whole hiring process, interviewing,

everything. It's my favorite. But if

it's not your favorite, I think walking

through this is going to be extremely

helpful for you. What do you get with

vague job descriptions? Vague

candidates. Be very specific with

responsibilities and expectations. So, I

like to use the four Rs framework for

drafting job descriptions. And rather

than just running through the different

four Rs, I actually want to describe

what each R is and then walk you through

an actual job description that I have

here right in front of me on my phone.

So the first R is role. What

contribution is this individual making

to the organization? What function do

they have within the team? So for this

job description, this is for a brand

director and the role overview is

company is looking for a brand director

to build and scale the CEO's personal

brand across YouTube, LinkedIn and other

key platforms. This role requires a deep

understanding of content strategy,

social media growth, and personal brand

development. You will be responsible for

transforming CEO's thought leadership

into an influential digital presence

that resonates with entrepreneurs,

business leaders, and innovators. So

that's the role part of the job

description. All right. So now we move

down to responsibilities. What are they

going to own? What tasks are they going

to own on a daily, weekly, monthly,

quarterly basis. This is a very

extensive one. So stick with me. Under

responsibilities, we have it broken down

into different subsections. First one is

content strategy and execution.

establish and scale the CEO's YouTube

presence, leveraging his speeches and

interviews to create both long- form and

short form content, eventually building

on top of this and developing platform

native platform first YouTube content.

Develop and execute a LinkedIn content

strategy incorporating a mix of written

posts and short form videos derived from

existing content. creative production

and management, oversee the filming and

editing process for social content,

ensuring highquality production and

platform specific optimization. And I

think you get the picture here like the

responsibilities are going very tactical

into what they are owning. What are they

doing on a daily basis that you expect

them to do? Now the next one is

requirements. I think this is pretty

obvious and and speaks for itself, but

essentially this is what are the skills

and experience they need or are required

in order for them to do this job to get

this role. So again, for this one, I'll

read a couple of the requirements, not

all of them. Uh, one of them is three

plus years of experience growing a

personal brand with proven success in

scaling reach and engagement, a strong

background in filming, editing, and

social content production, both short

form and long form. Experience managing

creatives. exceptional storytelling

skills with the ability to extract and

refine high value insights. So that's

requirements. Again, this is just

telling them this is what you need to be

able to do and have done in your career

thus far in order to qualify for this

role. And the final R is results. What

are the success metrics that we are

tracking? What does success look like?

What are we expecting them to do and

accomplish or what are we expecting to

have happen based on their

responsibilities? Think of it like

responsibilities is the input and

results is the output of those

responsibilities. So on this one, I'll

read you a couple. Again, I'm not going

to read them all cuz this is a very

heady extensive one. And this is

definitely going to be one of those

things that you can download. I'm sure

there's already been an icon that popped

up. Study it, duplicate it, and

use it for yourself. If you're hiring a

brand director, by all means, use it how

you need. Establish the CEO's YouTube

channel with consistent long- form

uploads and high performing clips. A

minimum of two videos per month. Scale

LinkedIn engagement and follower growth

through a mix of written and video

content. Posting at least two written

and two video posts per week. We want to

make sure that it is not only describing

the efforts, but it's very specific on

what the output will be. So, if you want

to be doing two videos a month, okay,

cool. Make sure to specify that, not

just say establish CEO's YouTube channel

with consistent long form uploads and

high performing clips. That would be

very vague and not helpful. Two things

that I like to add to a four Rs and they

have nothing to do. They don't start

with an R or anything, but it's

communication and cadence and

expectations. I always like to make sure

that a candidate understands like if you

expect them to respond at 7:30 a.m. in

the morning on Slack, well, that's not

necessarily the norm in most workplaces.

And so, if that is an expectation you

have, okay, by all means, have that. But

make sure you vocalize it and make it

clear to them before you hire them so

that they can tell you whether or not

they are down for that or not. And if

they're not, they're not the right fit

for your role. And that's fine. No

worries. The other one that I like to

add is core values. I like to ensure

that if a candidate is going to come in

and join the company that they agree

with what our core values are. And

ideally, it's something that they

already prioritize in their personal

life. And so when they hear your core

values, they actually resonate with it

and are able to speak to, oh, I live my

life by this. This is actually how I

apply blank core value. All right. We've

defined the need. We've defined the

role. We've even created a job

description using the four Rs framework.

And now we need to start the hiring

process. So, I'm going to share with you

my hiring funnel. Now, this is probably

going to seem pretty extensive and maybe

a little too much. It's worth it. We

talked at the top about how expensive it

is to hire somebody that is not the

right fit and then have to exit them and

rekick off the search. It is a brutal,

painful process. Trust me, I've been

through it multiple times. Do everything

in your power to not shortcut things. I

will tell you, I have hired a lot of

different creatives and anytime that

I've made a mistake on it, it's for only

one reason. I was in a rush. We had pain

on the team. We had pain in our process.

We had a very clear definition of what

we needed. And we were clearly solving a

problem because it was a problem we were

feeling every day.

But

I tried to shortcut the process and I

ignored red flags that were pretty

obvious and in my face. What

this hiring funnel is designed to do is

to make those red flags very clear, very

obvious, and then allow you and your

team to discuss them. Ultimately, we're

never going to find when we're searching

for a candidate a 100%. There it just

doesn't exist. So what you're looking

for is an 80% and you want to discuss

with your team if that remaining 20% is

something you feel confident either you

don't need or you can train. So the

first part of the hiring funnel is you

need to have a place where candidates

can submit their CV and potentially even

a video. This is obvious like you know

you can use Indeed, you can use all

these different platforms or you can

have something hosted on your website. I

would encourage you to do that if

possible. And this is an area where

they're able to upload their CV and show

you their work history. This seems

obvious, but there's a lot of you out

there right now that are thinking about

building your creative team and you've

never really thought about this part.

No, I don't overemphasize CVs and I want

to make sure that's super clear. It's

not the most important thing by any

means, but it does reveal some potential

strengths or weaknesses. For example, if

you notice that a candidate has had 10

jobs in the last five years, that is an

interesting thing. Not necessarily

something that's going to rule them out

by any means. Different industries,

different roles have higher turnover,

right? And it might be just normal and

part of the function of that role.

That's fine. But it's definitely

something you're going to want to have a

little bit of a further investigation on

and discuss in the screening call. And

for the video portion, I highly

encourage anybody that I'm working with

to give the option for a candidate to

submit a video. I wouldn't require it,

but I would definitely give them the

option. And the reason why is I think

one, you see a lot of creativity that

comes through, but more than that,

there's no personality. There's no human

element that comes through in a CV.

You're not going to see like how they

talk if they talk too much, their

negative or positive tone, right? you're

not going to see their little quirks,

their silly personality that come out.

That can be such a massive benefit for

you to see how you feel they will fit

with the rest of your team. For example,

there was a role that I was hiring maybe

about a year, a year and a half ago, a

creative director role. We had been

looking for about 3 or 4 months. I

remember this one candidate came through

and I was very impressed with their CV

and everything, but what really

impressed me and stood out was they had

made a video, not like an edit that was

showing what their skills were. It was a

video of them talking about their

experience, their background, their

passions, and how that applied to the

role we were hiring. It was it was

amazing. It was a multicam video, too. I

mean, it was very impressive and it was

very clear that this individual was

hungry for the role and truly believed

they were the right fit. They put in way

more effort than any of the other

candidates. And spoiler alert, we hired

him. After they submit their resume or

CV, you're going to have somebody on

your team that is going to be doing

screening calls. So, what they're going

to do is they're going to have gobs and

and piles of résumés and CVs to look

through. In doing the screening, what

you're trying to do is you're verifying

that they are aligned with the salary

expectations. If you're wanting them to

be in person or remote or hybrid, they

understand the communication

expectations. If you're an organization

that needs somebody working 6 days a

week, you're making sure that they're

okay with that. If this role is someone

who is traveling, let's say it's, you

know, a videographer that's always going

to be on the road traveling five days a

week. Well, you need to make sure that

they saw that in the job description and

they're good with that. And so, you're

just making sure that this candidate

understands all the basics and they're

good with it. You're also verifying a

little bit of experience. So, I give a

few questions to the screeners, whoever

is doing it, whether it's a recruiter or

just somebody else on your team. I tend

to provide them two or three slightly

technical questions. The reason why is

because oftentimes if I'm running the

technical assessment or the technical

interview or the final interview, I want

to watch the screening call. I want to

understand how they showed up so that I

know how to interview them. And by

asking a few light technical questions,

you get a lot of insight on whether or

not they know what the they're

actually talking about or if they're

just kind of bullshitting you. Or the

craziest thing that I've literally

encountered five times in the last month

is individuals using AI that is

listening to the question in the

background and spitting out an answer in

bullet points for them to regurgitate to

you. This is becoming a very big thing

and uh I have literally experienced it

five times in the last month and it's

it's alarming. If you get a good

technical question or two into the

screening interview, you typically can

avoid this and sus out if it's actually

Sarah answering the question or if it's

chat GBT. Once they get through your

second line of defense, which is the

screening call, you're going to go to a

technical interview. Now, ideally, this

is conducted by somebody who actually

understands the role deeply. So for me,

luckily I understand all the different

roles on a creative team. So I'm able to

do a technical interview for any role.

Designer, motion graphics, uh

videographer, editor, copywriter,

content strategist, channel manager,

anything you name it. Often times you

don't have somebody like that in your

organization. And so if you don't, what

you're going to look for is somebody who

can understand the role as best as

possible, right? And so what this might

look like is doing some research on what

a YouTube video editor is and what they

need to be proficient in so that you can

actually ask them the right questions.

Because if you don't ask them the right

questions, you're not going to know if

they're the right fit. There's a second

thing that I'm going to touch on here in

a second, technical assessment. Just cuz

they do an amazing job on a technical

assessment doesn't necessarily mean they

can do it over and over and over again.

And so you want to ask strategic

questions that not only show that they

know what they're doing, but show you

how they think about solving problems,

how they think about coming up with new

ideas and innovating on stuff they've

already been doing. Your goal with the

technical interview is to assess

strategic knowledge and the ability to

execute. You want to make sure they have

both. So, for example, if I'm

interviewing a short form editor, let's

say I have a brand and we have a very

known style of short form content, okay?

And a lot of people copy it, for

example. Well, if that's the case, I'm

going to not ask the short form editor,

do you know how to make what we are

currently doing? What I'm going to ask

them, and this is what I've done with

many of the different brands I've worked

with, I'm going to ask, how would you go

about innovating on this? I'm tired of

the style that we've been doing for the

last 6 months. I need something fresh

and new. What would you do in order to

get that new style? What I'm not looking

for is the right answer of this is the

new style I would do. I'm looking for

how they think. How would they go about

getting that new style, creating that

new style? Because the problem for a lot

of editors is they're very good at

following rules and instructions. They

come from a checklist army, but they

don't have ownership and they don't have

the ability to create innovation and

drive a new style, new format on their

own. And so that's where you're trying

to assess their strategic knowledge and

abilities to execute on said strategic

knowledge. So if they pass the technical

interview, you're going to want to

immediately provide them a technical

assessment. This should mirror what

their actual job looks like. You don't

want to do something that has nothing to

do with what their day-to-day is. This

is your opportunity to see how do they

show up on the tasks that I'm going to

be giving them daily, weekly, or

monthly. So, for example, if we're

hiring that short form editor, what I'm

going to do is they just walked me

through how they would go about creating

a new style for our short form content.

So, what am I going to do for the

technical assessment? I'm going to give

them 72 hours and maybe one hour of raw

footage and let them create a new style

for our short form content. Now, what

are we testing in this? Well, one, we

gave them a 72-hour deadline. So, we're

seeing how are they with time management

and commitments. Number two, they're

going to have to deliver this item to

us. How do they go about delivering it?

Like, do they just like upload it to

Google Drive and hit share straight from

Google Drive? Do they package it into an

email? How is their communication?

Number four, we're seeing can they

actually execute on what they were

saying in the interview? They talked a

good talk of how they're going to come

up with a new format and new style. Can

they actually deliver on that? And

number five, do they show their work? So

maybe they created this new style, but

do they explain how they went about it?

Now, that's bonus points and everything,

but if somebody does that, what that

shows me is they have the strategic

ability, they're very creative, they can

execute, and even crazier, they could

train somebody else to do the same. If

they can understand the why and the how,

then they can duplicate that to anybody.

But again, please just make sure that

the technical assessment lines up with

what their actual role is. You don't

want to waste anybody's time. The other

thing too, little side note here is

ensure that you give every single

candidate for the same role the same

technical assessment. If you give them

different you don't know how to

measure them against each other versus

if they all have the same thing, you're

able to assess who's the right fit and

who's not the right fit for your team.

If they absolutely blew you away with

their technical interview and their

technical assessment, congrats. You're

on to the next round. It's not over yet.

Culture interview. If you are a team, an

individual or a company that actually

operates off of your core values and

builds your culture accordingly, then

this should really matter. This

is where you find out, okay, they're

very technically proficient. They're

very good at their job. Now, the way

they operate as a human in the

workplace, does that work with the

current humans we have in the workplace?

For example, if speed of communication

is a high priority, like you send a

Slack message and expect a response at

the latest five minutes later, and this

person prioritizes deep work and will go

8 hours a day without checking their

Slack, they might be an incredible

editor and do amazing work, but it might

not work well for your team. If you

expect 5 minutes and they wait 8 hours,

you're going to be pissed. and

you're going to be pissed, but it's not

really their fault because you didn't do

a good job of determining whether or not

they lined up with your communication

culture. And honestly, a lot of the

hires that I've made, I actually

overemphasize their cultural fit over

their technical fit. And it's just my

belief that I can train the technical

gap pretty well. It's actually really

not that hard to take an editor who you

might rate as like a five or six out of

10 to like a eight or nine fairly

quickly. However, somebody culturally

that you rate as a five or six, taking

them to a eight or nine, that's going to

be a lot harder. You're talking about

ways that somebody operates in and

outside of work. And so, if they're

getting reinforcement and they're

building the pattern of doing it outside

of work, you have a big hill to climb.

So, I prefer if somebody is technically

mid, but they are culturally great. They

show enthusiasm, lack of ego, and

they're willing to do whatever the

it takes. Man, I'd hire that person at a

five or a six over an eight or nine

editor who has a massive ego, who can't

take any feedback, and is kind of lazy.

And actually, an example of this is

Trevor Odum. I hired Trevor about 3

years ago, and I would call him probably

a 6 out of 10 in his editing.

Culturally, he was a 10 out of 10. He

showed massive humility. He showed

extreme eagerness to learn, willing to

do whatever it took, hard

worker, would take the shitty

responsibilities as well as the cool

responsibilities, and showed a lot of

consistency, especially for a young age.

I hired Trevor and we trained and worked

on his technical skills. And the reason

why we were able to work on the

technical skills and he was able to see

growth is because he had the soft

skills. The culture of it was very much

there. I'll take that all day

over somebody who is highly proficient

but a Now, ways that

you can identify whether or not they're

a culture fit is asking about their past

work environments. What was that like?

How do they approach problem solving? A

question that I really like to ask is if

you're in a meeting with five or more

people and somebody gives you direct

feedback in front of everyone, how do

you respond? If somebody is demanding

that you drop what you are currently

working on and assist them, but they're

not your manager, how do you respond? I

like to give them real life scenarios

that actually occur in the workplace.

And what I just mentioned is two of many

very common occurrences that happen in

the workplace. Right? If I know somebody

who's higher up on the team, maybe the

CEO or CMO has a preferred way of

communicating, I'm going to ask them how

they feel about that preferred way of

communicating. A lot of CEOs actually

prefer very direct, very quick

communication. They don't add fluff.

They don't add smiley faces and things

like that. I like to ask, are you okay

with that? Sometimes if you're hiring a

videographer to film with a CEO, for

example, the CEO is not going to want to

talk to the videographer about their

life. They're not going to want to talk

about anything other than what they are

there to film. That's okay. There's

nothing wrong with that. But I need to

make sure that the videographer is going

to be able to handle something like that

and not need to talk about their

personal life with their boss. All

right. If we have passed the screening,

if we've passed the technical interview,

the technical assessment and the culture

interview, we are now on to the final

interview. And typically what this looks

like is a high-up leader. So if there is

a department like let's say for example

you have a CMO in your company and your

content team falls under the marketing

department maybe the final interview is

going to be with the CMO or if it's a

very very uh important and crucial role

maybe the final interview is with the

CEO I prefer the final interview to be

with the most senior person that this

individual will be corresponding with.

So if they are going to be messaging or

interacting with the CEO in any manner I

do think that the final interview should

be the CEO. However, if they're never

going to interact with the CEO at all,

CMO, director of brand, whatever is

perfectly perfectly fine. And usually

the way this works is it's somebody with

a lot of experience. Okay? So, they've

hired a lot of people. They've hired a

lot of the right people. They've hired a

lot of the wrong people. And they're

reviewing all the different interview

notes from all the different interviews

leading to this moment. They are the

ones with the most context, both from

their past history, but also the most

context on this specific candidate. And

so it's their job to poke holes in any

areas that were question marks from the

previous interviews. If somebody thought

they were hardworking but potentially

weren't open to working on weekends and

this role required every once in a while

to work a Saturday or Sunday, the final

interview is going to have to press into

that and ensure that they're okay

working on an occasional Saturday or

Sunday. You shouldn't leave the final

interview with any additional questions.

Everything should be finalized within

that interview. Now, the same goes for

the candidate. You give them on all of

these, but especially the final

interview, you want to give them the

opportunity to ask you questions as

well. In doing so, you're going to learn

a lot about them. If they have no

questions to ask, probably not a good

thing. On the other hand, somebody who

asks very strategic questions that make

sure that they understand what is

required, what's expected of them or

they gain clarity on that. That is

somebody who is very interesting because

they are thoughtful and they make their

decisions based on information and

context, not just emotion and

excitement. Now, here's a pro tip. Uh,

what I just said is insane,

right? That's like so many different

steps. And you might be like, "Yo,

homie, I am a oneperson team that's

about to hire my first person." Then

what I would encourage you to do is not

skip any of these steps, but maybe what

you do is you combine them. So instead

of having six different steps in the

process, maybe you have three different

calls or two different calls that you do

with this person or these candidates and

you just chunk them together. So maybe

the technical, maybe the screening and

the technical occur in the same call.

Maybe culture and final are same and you

have the technical assessment in

between. That would be a three-part

process and you would be able to

accomplish that with one person.

ultimately use what you got. Okay? Like

if you don't have a team of 20 people,

yeah, you're not going to execute this.

That's fine. The other thing that I will

say is sometimes there are individuals

who you work with on a vendor like basis

that they might be able to be part of

the process. Say for example, you have a

YouTube agency you're working with and

you're hiring a YouTube editor. If you

have a good relationship with this

agency and you trust them and you've

established what the timeline of your

engagement will be, so they know you're

eventually bringing it inhouse, maybe

they can conduct the technical interview

for the YouTube editor since they

probably understand YouTube editing far

more than you do. So, there's a lot of

ways to be creative with this. Don't

write it off just because you don't have

the headcount to be able to do such an

extensive process. You want to be

extensive. You want to be detailed

because you're bringing somebody in that

is either going to raise the bar or

lower the bar. And all we want to do

here is raise the bar. Okay. So, why

does this process actually work? Well,

one, it removes bad hires early.

Especially the optional video. This can

filter out candidates who aren't taking

the role serious, right? They're

applying to a hundred different role. I

mean, now using AI, they can

automate applying to like a million

different roles every day. And

so you can weed out who are the ones

that are just mass applying versus the

ones that are looking at this specific

role within your specific organization

or team and saying I'm a good fit for

this. Number two is we are actually

ensuring that there's platform alignment

here. Like we said at the top, we're

trying to prioritize platforms and hire

people accordingly, right? And so we're

using technical assessments to test the

execution ability before hiring them for

that specific platform. So, we get to

see this YouTube editor. Are they a

great editor or are they a great YouTube

editor? Number three is that it creates

cultural fit. Culture interviews allow

you to

avoid hiring somebody who is highkilled

but also a piece of Somebody who's

not going to fit into your culture. And

just because they don't fit in your

culture doesn't mean they're a piece of

But there are lots of pieces of

out there that are great

technically at what they do. and 6

months in you find out they're an

absolute nightmare to have on the team.

And even though their performance is

high, they drag everybody else's

performance low and they're actually an

anchor rather than a rocket. And

finally, this actually just speeds up

the hiring process. If you have a

designed and intentional process that

you follow, everybody whether it's you

yourself and I or you and your team are

on the same page and eliminates a lot of

unnecessary back and forth and it can

move people through the funnel a lot

faster. Now, I'm also going to share

with you a completely different funnel

system, but it doesn't work for every

single role. I've typically found that

it works best for editors, designers,

and strategists. It's a try out system

or a try out funnel. And I'm just going

to walk you through exactly how I do it.

What I did is on Monday, I announced

that we were conducting tryyouts. On

Monday, I opened up registration for the

tryyouts and closed registration by

12:00 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday. So,

they had a couple of days to be able to

sign up. Thursday at 3 or maybe 5:00

p.m., we sent out an email to everyone

who had registered. And the email had

the following. It had instructions on

what we expected. We want you to edit a

12 to 20 minute YouTube video using this

raw footage. We want you to create a

thumbnail and title. And we want you to

create a short form video that goes with

it. We were asking for a lot, but

ultimately that's what we're asking for

in the day-to-day job. And so we want to

make sure that what the assessment is

mirrors the job. And so what you're

going to notice here is it's essentially

the same funnel, but it's in a different

order. So we sent that email out. We

linked them to the raw footage, and we

gave them a due date. Again, this was

sent out Thursday at 5:00 p.m., and the

due date was Monday at 9:00 a.m. Just

like I mentioned earlier for the

technical assessment, we're measuring so

many different things. How do they

manage their time? They have all these

different tasks. How do they prioritize?

If somebody submits on time, but they

didn't submit everything, that might be

okay because maybe we've identified that

the short form video is the lowest

priority and the thumbnail and title

were just to see what their skills and

knowledge were there. And if they

prioritized and executed on the long

form video, maybe they win. Maybe we

just have more insights that they're not

capable of adding the ancillary benefits

of packaging or short form content as

well. And so you're able to evaluate

candidates on a very granular level. You

also get the benefit of they're all

editing the same exact footage and you

might be reviewing, you know, 10

different editors or in my case 200

different editors editing the same exact

footage. So what we had is about, I

think, 1500 different editors register

for it. Throughout the Thursday to

Monday deadline, we had about 220 250

editors that actually submitted their

work. And so then came the screening

time. That was gnarly. I'll tell you,

you get really bored of that

footage very fast. But the cool thing is

is you're able to evaluate how every

single person did the intro, how they

did the outro, and the meat of the

video. And so it's very easy to stack

different editors against each other and

evaluate who was the best. Now, what we

did is we reviewed everything. And the

ones who passed the technical

assessment, we then set up a screening

interview. Then that went to a technical

interview, then a culture, then final.

So essentially, we did the exact same

funnel as we normally would, but we

moved the technical assessment up front.

That was a very interesting way to do

it. Now, this doesn't work for every

single role. As you can probably

imagine, it would be almost impossible

to do this with, say, a videographer. So

the try out system only works from what

I have gathered. And please, I would

love to hear if any of you have used it

for other roles. Like I'm very curious

what I found success in just to remind

you is designers, editors, and

strategists. Anything that you can

provide one source piece that everyone

can use versus you being the source

piece and you can't scale to 100

different people, 200 people all across

the world. And like I said earlier, I

talked about hiring for culture rather

than skills. I actually want to make

this an entire section here because it's

that important. Think cultural fit over

perfection. I believe that you can teach

anything, but in a realistic amount of

time, you can teach technical skills

fairly easily. I I cringe when I say

that cuz I I know a lot of people are

going to hate that I say that, but I

truly believe you can train technical

skills pretty quick. However,

teaching hunger, empathy,

adaptability, these are traits that are

a lot harder to train, have years of

pattern established in their life that

you're going to have to overcome. Is it

doable? Yes. Is it worth your time and

money? No. And I truly believe that

somebody who is highly proactive, they

have high agency, they own everything,

they're hungry, they're going to get a

lot more done over a long period of time

than somebody who is technically

proficient but has less drive. And

here's an amazing example. There's an

individual named Jason Leva. I love this

man. Uh he was one of the best hires I

have ever made in my entire career. And

the crazy part is he wasn't that

experienced. You know, Jason, if you're

watching this, please hear this through

uh all love and everything, but I

actually didn't think his edit was that

great. I thought it was good enough and

he passed and went to the screening

call. He actually went through that

tryyout system. But what I noticed was

he was so hungry to learn and so willing

to figure out how to solve a problem. He

was a sponge. Now, most

directors would have written him off and

saw the edit and been like, "Well, that

wasn't in the top 10, so nah, we're not

going to move forward." Sure, he passed

the screening call, but now that I'm

doing the technical, ah, not a fit. But

what I noticed was that he was a sponge,

and he took feedback unbelievably well.

I gave him very direct feedback on the

interview, on his edit. I told him what

I really liked, and I told him what I

didn't like. I called out areas where he

made mistakes, right? there was a

dropped frame or there was, you know, a

plugin missing or something like that.

And Jason took that feedback so

graciously. He was grateful for it. He

thanked me for it on the call. It was

crazy. And so it was in that moment that

I realized, okay, this is the kind of

character that I want to bring onto the

team because whether it's short form

editing right now or eventually being a

videographer later, this man is willing

to do whatever it takes. And that's what

I need more than somebody who is

technically proficient but not adaptable

and not willing to hear feedback. Hire

for mindset and train for execution. A

motivated member can grow into a role.

However, a disengaged one will

definitely stay stagnant. Now, the next

section is prioritizing strengths that

match the platform. Every platform has a

unique content style and requires a very

specific type of creative thinking. If

you hire the wrong person for the wrong

platform, they might be really good at

YouTube shorts and Instagram reels, but

if you hire them to be a long form

editor, you might kill your engagement

and your success on YouTube. Now, we

talked earlier about how all the

platforms behave differently, right?

like you are yourself and you show up as

you to all these different platforms.

But just like if I am here filming right

now, then I go meet up with my mom and

then have dinner and beers with

the boys. I'm myself, but I'm going to

present slightly different given the

context and scenario I'm in, right? We

already discussed that. And that's how

the platforms behave. You show up as

yourself on LinkedIn just like you do on

Tik Tok and Instagram, but you're going

to talk about and emphasize different

things based on the context of the

platform you're in. You need to reverse

engineer those needs into individuals

and that's how you hire. Take Tik Tok

and Instagram for example. Uh these are

short form and fast-paced traditionally

platforms. And so the best fit is going

to be a creator who is immersed and

understands trends and understands

fast-paced editing or at least

understands how to continue to open and

close loops to retain attention. This is

ideally somebody who lives, eats and

breathes Tik Tok and Instagram. They

need to understand really truly what is

happening on the platform. What is the

psychology and what are the viewers and

consumers on that platform expecting and

looking for? Ideally, the 2.0 version of

that is they understand all of that and

they're able to identify tiny little

gaps in the market, maybe within your

niche that currently exist, and they're

able to provide you the direction of how

to fill it. Now, a very clear red flag

for somebody on Tik Tok or Instagram

that you're hiring is going to be if

they are overly focused on high

production value without understanding

what it takes to attract attention, a

strong hook. And ultimately

understanding that high quality, as we

discussed earlier, is not determined by

us on the team. We don't subjectively

determine what quality is. The audience

determines what quality is. And so if

somebody is overemphasizing high

production value and high quality

content, well, that's based on their

subjective definition of what quality

is, not what the audience is. And that's

not what we care about. Now, LinkedIn,

if we're looking for somebody there, the

best fit is probably somebody who

thrives in long form writing, right?

They probably need to know some

penmanship and have a little bit of

abilities there. But it's not going to

be somebody that excels at writing long

form articles necessarily. This is

somebody who is able to take a couple of

sentences and structure them together in

a way that not only hooks attention but

holds attention throughout the post.

What's going to usually work here is a

writer who is skilled in crafting high

value concise content that sparks

conversation. That last part is key. You

want to especially with how LinkedIn and

we talked about it earlier but I'm just

going to hit it again because LinkedIn

is one of the ones that I'm most excited

about this year. LinkedIn right now, if

you get engagement on the platform,

everyone sees. It's crazy. It It

literally is true virality. And so what

you want is somebody who understands not

only how to provide value, but how to

provide value that sparks conversation

in the comments. That is what is going

to drive awareness beyond just your

current following. And the red flag is

somebody who is too focused on formal

and corporate writing. You would bet

that that's what you want on LinkedIn,

right? It's a bunch of business people

in suits and No, that. That's

the reason why you don't want that.

Everybody does that. Everybody sounds

like they're in their elevator

pitch, you know, in a interview with

like a board full of like 10 different

people trying to sound all stiff and

proper. Nobody gives a about that.

The more human and the more personable

you are, actually, the more you will

stand out on that platform. And so you

want to make sure it's somebody who if

they're writing on your behalf is able

to understand your personality and

inject that into the content rather than

taking it out. Now, if you're hiring for

YouTube long form specifically, you're

going to be looking for an editor who

understands that your opening 15 to 30

seconds is the most crucial part of your

entire video. And if you don't

nail that, the rest doesn't matter. They

also need to be somebody who then

understands that throughout the video

they need to be creating tension,

stakes, open loops, some sort of reason

for the viewer to continue watching.

They need to understand that if you do

deliver all the value of the video in

the opening 3 minutes, why would they

remain for the next 10? So, they need to

understand good storytelling and

engaging editing, but they also need to

understand the subject matter enough

that they are competent and aware of the

subject matter so they can sprinkle the

value throughout the video rather than

giving it all in the upfront. Because,

as we talked about before, YouTube loves

watch time. And so, that's what you're

going to want to look for in a YouTube

editor. Huge red flag here is if you're

hiring a videographer for your YouTube,

if it's somebody who overemphasizes very

traditional styles of production. Maybe

you're a running gun operation doing

more vlog style content and they want to

stop every scene, every moment and

ensure that the lighting is perfect, the

composition is perfect. They want to

they aren't willing to use zoom lenses.

They only use primes. Not going to work,

right? You want to make sure that their

technical skills align with the

technical needs of the role. All right,

the next section is start lean and grow

intentionally. I laugh because uh this

is a a huge problem that I see with

media teams and then they have to do

massive layoffs. Avoid overhiring too

early. A small, high impact, nimble seal

team six style team will accomplish so

much more than a bloated inefficient

team. I believe in hiring specialists,

but early on these specialists need to

be willing to be multifunctional, okay?

They have to wear multiple hats. You

might have somebody who is specializing

in YouTube long form editing, but you're

probably going to need them to cut some

short clips and maybe even

create some thumbnails. That is okay. In

the beginning, that is what you're going

to need. And so, you need to make sure

that you emphasize that in the hiring

process. Here's an example. If you're at

the very beginning stages and you're

limited on budget, you probably need a

videographer and an editor, but you

might not be able to afford hiring both.

And so, you're going to hire somebody

who can do both. Somebody who can film

and edit. You gain a lot of efficiencies

in that. Ultimately, down the road,

you're going to want to send them down

one path or the other so that they can

be the specialist and you can get the

most out of their skill set. But in the

beginning, you have to have people

wearing multiple hats. So again, if you

need a videographer and editor and you

have a very limited budget, I recommend

hiring somebody who is skilled at both.

Now, you need to make sure you identify

which one is the priority. If you

prioritize really good filming and

steady hand and all that great

question asking. And maybe they're not

as good at editing, maybe that is an

okay concession to make at the stage you

were currently at. Now, why does this

actually matter? Like, why do we want to

not overhire? I mean, it seems obvious,

but I'm going to run through just so

that you really understand why you

should avoid this. Number one, you avoid

unnecessary payroll expenses before

proving the ROI on content. I truly

believe that anybody who does content

correctly will get an ROI literally no

matter what they do, even as an

employee. However, you might not be

doing it good, and you might not be at

the point where you can actually hire

enough people or the right people to do

it well. And if that's the case, then

you might be putting out content that

sucks and doesn't provide anything. In

which case, I don't know that I'd be

scaling your team up from there. You're

just going to be hiring more people that

are not capable at actually driving

awareness to your content, which means

you're driving your ROI down because

you're adding headcount and payroll, but

you're not adding any profitability or

revenue to the company from the content.

If you keep the team smaller and don't

hire too quickly, well, you also keep

operations nimble, making it flexible,

easy to pivot and move around as needed.

I can't tell you how many times I've had

to change process, priorities,

everything, because one, platforms are

constantly evolving and changing and

requiring new things for you to win, but

also your client. If you're building a

team for the CEO or founder, or if you

are the CEO and founder yourself, your

desired outcomes, your preferences are

going to change. You might really enjoy

doing vlogging for a while and then go

into a season where things are stressful

and you don't want to have a camera

around all the time and you need to make

more sit down direct to camera style

content like this. Well, you need a

nimble team that is able to pivot and

reverse engineer those needs. If you

have a massive bloated team, oftentimes,

I mean, think of it like, you know, if

you're turning on a dime in a little

speedboat, it's not going to be that

difficult. But if you have to turn on a

dime in a oil tanker, you're

The last benefit that I really

see here is there's a lot of context

that is developed. You allow the

individuals on your team to understand

the various functions that you have on

the team. Well, how is that helpful?

Well, one, when you bring in more

specialists, they're able to communicate

in an educated way cuz they did the role

at least at some capacity. So, they can

speak the lingo. They can talk the talk.

Two, they understand what any request

they make actually takes for the other

person. They know that if you're asking

them to edit a video that was just shot

this morning and edit it by the next

morning, you're going to be up all

night. A lot of people don't realize

that. And so I think that it's not only

effective in helping the team

communicate and work together well, but

you also get this benefit of if somebody

is sick or quits or gets fired, you have

people on the team that do maybe not at

the same level, but they understand the

role and how to function within it. Now,

as the team scales up, you're going to

go through this process where you take

these specialists who you are asking to

be generalists for a short period of

time, and you're going to move them back

into their specialist role again as the

team scales. And so, I just want to

share a very quick little framework for

you on how you go about expanding these

roles gradually. Step one, you're going

to start with the multi-roll hires.

Okay? So, it's going to be somebody who

is highly proficient at filming and

they're really good at editing and so

they're doing both of those tasks. Okay?

They're handling multiple tasks. Then

what you need to do is ensure that you

are documenting and defining the

process. You want to make sure that all

the workflow, every little tiny little

thing that this individual is doing is

documented and it's super clear for the

next person that comes in. Once you do

that, this videographer and editor,

they're highly proficient at filming and

good at editing. They should document

their whole process for editing. And

once you hire an editor, they no longer

need to edit. So, they can now focus

entirely on filming. They can

specialize. So, that leads us to number

three, which is specialize as you scale.

Once the volume starts to increase,

volume of output and volume of members

on the team, you can start to split

roles to improve efficiency. For

example, if I am an editor, but I also

have to jump up every two hours and film

with the talent I'm working for, I'm

losing massive efficiency in my editing.

Every editor that is watching heard that

the moment that you break out of the

edit, it's not like you lose that 1 hour

that you went to go film. you have

another 30 to 45 minutes of trying to

get back into that flow state that you

were in. And honestly, a lot of times

it's very difficult to get back into it.

In general, it doesn't take 30, 40

minutes. It might take waiting until the

next day. And so, anytime that you can

allow somebody to stay in that flow

state, especially an editor, a designer,

somebody that's doing more batch work

like

that, you gain so much efficiency and

what I subjectively call quality. Now,

in the interest of starting lean and

growing intentionally, a very common

question that comes up for people is,

well, do I hire full-time in-house

employees or do I hire contractors and

agencies? And so, my team and I, we

broke down, we actually created like a

whole table that we're going to walk

through that contrast the benefits or

potential downsides given different

scenarios, different factors that we're

wanting to keep in mind. And we're going

to compare full-time employees versus a

contractor or agency. And so I'm

actually going to read this off my

phone. This is something that you can

download if you would like. We actually

have a worksheet that you can go through

and it'll help you evaluate whether you

in your scenario should actually use a

full-time employee or hire a contractor

or agency. Let's dive in. So the first

factor that we're looking at is budget.

And uh this is obviously a major uh

concern especially for those of you who

are in the early days, right? You're

maybe a startup or you're a soloreneur

and you don't have a lot that you're

working with. This is where I'm at right

now. I don't have any massive budget or

anything and so I'm having to think

strategically about what I bring in

full-time versus contract out. For

full-time employees, it's a higher

long-term cost. Okay? You have salary,

benefits, training, right? If you bring

somebody in, you need to invest in them.

And the difference between a full-time

employee and a contractor here is you

don't need to be training contractors.

In fact, they should not require any

sort of training. They should come in

batteries included. They should be able

to do the role immediately. You're not

going to be paying for your contractors

to attend a workshop or uh consume

courses online. That's something that

they should be doing on their own time

and their own dime. Now, on the

contractor side for budget or contractor

agency, they're more cost-effective for

short-term projects or specialized

needs. Here's a great example. This very

course that we're working on, there's a

full-time employee working on it and

there's a contractor working on it. So,

behind the camera right now is Trevor

Odum and he is actually on our team, but

then we are working with an amazing

motion graphics artist named Michael and

he is a contractor because right now I

don't have the need for full-time motion

graphics. I I wish I did. that'd be

awesome, but that's not the

place that we're at right now. And so,

if we were to bring him on full-time, we

wouldn't have enough work for him

anyways. And so, it's far more cost

effective and operationally less

intensive to be able to just bring him

on on a project-by-p project basis. The

next factor is workload. Okay, so for

the full-time employee, this looks like

ongoing daily tasks that require their

full-time attention. If you don't, like

I just mentioned with the our contractor

that we're working with for the motion

graphics, if you don't have enough work

where they're doing daily tasks, then it

is most likely not a full-time role and

not necessary at this point. For

example, a lot of you are filming

content, right? But maybe you only film

once or twice a month. Why would you

have a full-time videographer if all

they're doing is showing up twice a

month to film with you in batches? That

to me is a great scenario where you

would want to hire a contractor or an

agency. So the workload on the

contractor agency looks more like

project based, it's flexible or it's

temporary work. So maybe you have a

scenario where you have an event coming

up, okay? And instead of just having one

videographer, you need like four

different people going around and

capturing B-roll, testimonials, filming

the keynotes, whatever. This is a

scenario where you might hire a bunch of

contractors or an agency to fulfill this

temporary work. The third factor that we

want to keep in mind and and use to I

guess determine whether or not we're

going to hire somebody full-time or if

we're going to bring on a contractor or

agency is expertise. Now, on the

full-time side, typically they have deep

knowledge and a long-term investment in

your company. Even if they don't come in

with like uh master level knowledge,

that's fine. You're going to invest in

them. And if they're the right culture

fit, as we discussed throughout this

whole section, they're worth it. And

you're going to invest in training.

You're going to provide them courses.

You're going to provide them workshops.

You might sit down one-on-one with them

once or twice a week to really pour into

them. And that's something that you're

going to get the return on because they

are a full-time employee working for

you. However, on the flip side,

contractors, not the case. Contractors

should come in as the expert. Ideally,

they have specialized knowledge that may

not be needed long term. So, a great

example of this is in the past what I've

done is hired agencies for 3 to 6 months

and we bring them in and we have them

school us, teach us on what they're

doing, provide us the playbooks of how

we can move forward without them. I

think of it like expedited learning.

You're almost paying for like a fast

pass to be able to move past some of the

clunky learning stages uh that a lot of

people take like 2 or 3 years to get

down. You're able to accomplish that in

potentially 6 months with a really

quality agency. Now, the next factor is

speed and agility. I have a lot of

thoughts on this, but first I'm just

going to go with what we have on the

table here. It takes time to onboard and

train an employee, right? Typically,

you're looking at 60 to 90 days before

they're really up to speed and executing

at the level that you're looking for.

The beauty though is they do provide

continuity and consistency. Okay? Okay.

So once they are onboarded in theory, as

long as you do a good job of retaining

them and you provide a good work

environment where they're always able to

grow and learn, they are more likely to

stick there. And so you're going to have

the same person working on the same

projects. I'm going to kind of jump into

it already, but the problem on the

agency side that I've experienced is

agencies do tend to have a higher

turnover rate. And so, for example, when

I've worked with YouTube agencies, what

you'll find is you might have like seven

different editors over the course of six

to 12 months that work on your projects

because they're turning through them. No

matter how good they are at having

playbooks, checklists, all that

there is a difference and and you start

to notice that it's not as consistent in

the quality or in the style. You might

not care about that. And so, if that's

not a factor that you give a about,

it. Who gives a let's just

hire somebody full-time in-house if you

have the amount of work necessary for

that. If we're looking for extreme

consistency here, I probably would not

recommend going the agency route. Now,

the benefit on speed and agility that

you get with the contractor or agency is

you do get immediate access to

expertise. So, unlike a 30 60 90day

onboarding plan with an employee,

agencies would be fired immediately if

it took 90 days for them to get up to

speed. they're they're just like that is

not the way that they function. And so

typically what you'll find is maybe you

have an onboarding call with them, but

then after that they're ripping. And so

if you do have something that you need

done immediately, the agency or

contractor route might be a better

solution for the short term for you.

Now, brand consistency, what you may

think of is like making sure that they

have the right logos, fonts, colors, all

that And that is important and I

care about that. But that's not what I

emphasize the most when I'm talking

brand consistency. I'm thinking about

like messaging or topics that maybe the

the talent we're working with have no

desire to ever talk about. Okay? Or

maybe we know as a team that there are

certain statements in context of what's

being said that are fine, but if they're

cut out of the context, it's going to be

really bad. That's something that you're

going to be able to reinforce and

establish extreme clarity on with

somebody that's in-house far more than a

contractor or agency. The reason why is

because not only are they constantly

working on projects for you, they are

also involved in your internal meetings,

okay? And so they're getting feedback

far more consistently than an agency or

contractor. So they know where they

stand with the content that they are

creating. and when they do it right or

when they do something that goes against

brand guidelines. Typically on the

contractor and agency side from my

experience on brand consistency, this is

one of the areas where it requires the

most amount of oversight. I can't tell

you the amount of times that an agency

that I've worked with over the years

just didn't quite get it right when it

came to what we were trying to do from a

brand positioning and association

standpoint. even down to simple things

like if the talent on camera is

referencing, you know, a successful

entrepreneur and a not successful

entrepreneur, they might flash up two

individuals that we want no association

with. And that happened very

consistently when working with

contractors. And the last factor in this

section that we're trying to use to

determine whether or not we're going to

hire somebody full-time versus a

contractor or agency is scalability.

Full-time employees typically, I

believe, are more scalable because they

are more ideal for your culture and

building culture and training people

into leadership roles. You're able to

scale the team up in my opinion because

maybe you hire somebody as a video

editor and over a year or two train them

up to be a manager and they can oversee

other video editors. And because of

that, they understand the culture and

the DNA of the team. They understand the

brand and what the preferences of that

brand are. And so not only are they able

to continue to use that and implement

that within their work, they're able to

train future members of the team. This

is really good for consistency and

scalability. Now, on the other hand, the

benefit of contractors on this is

actually not long-term scalability, but

they are very useful in testing out a

theory. For example, if right now you

are emphasizing YouTube, Instagram, and

Tik Tok, and you recognize that LinkedIn

is one of the platforms that you should

really, really around with in 2025

because it is the only platform right

now that has true organic reach. Okay,

that's an interesting hypothesis. I

would argue that you are correct, but

you don't totally know. And so rather

than going out and hiring a full-time

LinkedIn specialist that might cost you

a lot of money, what you could do is

take three to six months and test it out

with an agency or a contractor. Then

you're not making the high investment

and long-term commitment to an employee

and you're just doing an experiment and

validating whether or not this is

something worth investing in. And so in

that case, maybe we would bring on a

contractor to work on our LinkedIn for 3

4 months. and they're making the

content. We're tracking the performance.

We're tracking whether or not it's

generating qualified leads for us. But

then we're also working with this

contractor because they are an expert, a

subject matter expert in that field on

developing a playbook that then we can

use internally as our guiding light for

the new hire that we bring in full-time

once we have validated this idea. or on

the flip side, we find out that LinkedIn

was not for us and we didn't go through

the problem of hiring a full-time

employee, incurring that cost, and then

unfortunately having to part ways with

them. Now, we just went through and kind

of compared full-time employees versus

contractors and agencies, but what I

want to do is actually break down three

different phases or stages that you may

find yourself in and what I would

recommend you do. Now, I want to be very

clear here. This is general advice,

okay? I don't know what your exact

scenario is. So, there's a lot of nuance

to this. This is a good starting point

and a good guiding light for you. I

would not necessarily completely follow

this as doctrine. The best version of

this is like, I'm going to dive into

your team, look at everything that

you're doing, look at what your goals

are, and we're going to develop a whole

custom plan for you. But if we're not

able to do that, 99% of you we're never

going to be able to do that with, I

would use this as your starting point.

So what we're going to do is we're going

to go through three different growth

stages and then the recommended hiring

approach that is associated with each

stage. So stage number one is zero to

one year. We're a baby at this point.

And what I recommend we do is primarily

hire contractors and agencies. That way

we can stay lean, not invest a ton of

upfront cost, but also we get to test

our theories and test the platforms and

see what works best for us. I really

believe that there are the best

platforms to be on and then there's the

best platforms for you to be on. And so

what I would recommend is utilizing the

agency contractor method to validate,

are you cut out for LinkedIn? Are you

cut out for Tik Tok? Just because

everyone says Tik Tok is the best place

to be. Well, if you're not good in that

format, that Whatever format

you're best in and most comfortable in

and feel you can provide the most value

in, that's what you should do. Okay. So

here we're testing and validating those

theories. We're staying lean and

minimizing our investment. As the

founder, I recommend in this stage you

are heavily involved in the content and

strategy that you are making. You should

be shaping what this looks like. Of

course, you want to bring in contractors

and agencies that you trust and that you

lean on, but ultimately this is your

brand and this is what you are building.

So you should be the one that is shaping

what that will look like. The next

growth stage is kind of like years one

through three. Again, roughly there's a

lot of plus minus to this, but let's

just say roughly one to three years in,

you are in the stage where you are

transitioning critical roles in house.

So what this may look like is maybe you

were working with a YouTube agency for a

year and maybe you have realized after

that year, hey, YouTube is our top

priority. This is where 70 80% of our

qualified leads are coming through.

Well, in that case, maybe you want to

hire a video editor inhouse. And maybe

that doesn't necessarily look like

firing the agency. It just looks like

reducing their scope. So, instead of

them doing the editing, maybe they're

just doing consulting for you. So,

you're pairing your video editor inhouse

with the consulting power and the

knowledge and expertise and experience

that the agency has. The other benefit

in this is typically agencies offer

multiple services. So, a lot of

different YouTube agencies, for example,

don't just do the editing, they also

help with ideiation, scripting, and

packaging. And maybe this editor that

you bring in house isn't skilled at

those things. And so, you take the

editing off of the agency's plate and

bring that in-house, but then you still

have the agency doing the ideation,

scripting, and packaging. And so, you're

keeping them around for very specialized

skills. Now, stage number three is 3

plus years. And this is around the time

sometimes people get this earlier around

2 years but typically around 3 plus

years this is when you want to bring

everything inhouse. Okay. So all

critical roles that are high volume and

necessary to the business I recommend

bring it inhouse. Uh we just went

through kind of like the pluses and

minuses and the benefits of full-time

in-house employees versus contractors.

So I think you understand the value of

having an in-house team. One thing that

I didn't fully touch on that I think is

actually really worth highlighting here

is that when I have brought roles

inhouse, so previously working with an

agency and then I end up bringing in

house, the speed at which we are able to

accomplish and finish projects increases

dramatically. The level of communication

goes up drastically. It's literally

impossible for an agency to be able to

communicate with you at the cadence that

a full-time employee does because they

have multiple clients that they're

servicing, right? And a lot of these

agencies, their editors are overseas and

so they're in a totally different time

zone. Okay? So it changes the dynamic

completely. The moment that you start to

bring things inhouse, speed goes up like

crazy. Now, what I do recommend is still

at this stage, there are going to be

some agencies you're going to keep on or

contractors you'll keep on either for

very, very specialized work or access to

worlds that you don't have access to.

What do I mean by that? Well, typically

a media buying agency might have a

better relationship with Meta than you

do or your media buyer does because

maybe they're spending millions of

dollars a year on Meta and so they're a

more important client for that platform.

If any of you out there have ran ads or

done organic content consistently on a

platform, you know, having a

relationship with the rep there is

valuable as And so if you can't

get that with your full-time in-house

team, you may want to maintain an agency

purely for that relationship in case

something goes wrong. I also believe

that agencies or contractors can be very

useful to have in your rolodex available

to you so that you can scale up as

needed for sprints. Sometimes you might

have a launch where you're going to

triple the amount of creative output

that you normally have and you don't

want to hire full-time people for a

temporary need. So, you just scale up

temporarily with an agency and then you

can scale back down to what you were

normally doing and you don't have to

fire a bunch of people. Nobody likes

firing people. That's the worst

thing in the world. I would avoid it at

all costs. And the easiest way to avoid

it is scale up using contractors or

agencies. Hello there. Before we

continue on this course, I actually want

to inform you about something really

cool that my team and I are putting

together. We're putting together a

little newsletter for you. And this is

different than your average newsletter.

We're not going to be sending something

weekly or monthly. We're only going to

send you emails when we believe that we

have something that is truly valuable.

Whether it's a bite-sized nugget that's

going to change your perspective or a

crazy in-depth playbook, we only will be

sending you when we feel it will

drive massive awareness for your content

and scale your brand in the way that we

believe is best. So, if that sounds

interesting to you, you can go sign up

for it at calebston.com. If not, no

harm, no foul. And with that, I hope you

enjoy the rest of the course. Amazing.

We've hired all these individuals. We've

identified their roles. We've made it

clear to them. Now, we need to onboard

them. Okay? And I will tell you from

experience, a poor onboarding process

leads to weeks or months of wasted

productivity and a demotivated employee.

I will tell you an example. I started at

a role one point in my career and I

remember the first week I didn't have

any of the uh tech set up right like the

asauna the zooms all that none of

that was set up for me I didn't have my

work laptop and I had no expectations

that had been given to me no

deliverables that were required I didn't

even know what meeting cadence I should

be on I had no clarity and what happened

with no clarity extreme anxiety I was

constantly wondering like am I living up

to the expectations that my boss has. Am

I am I doing what is required? But how

can you know if you're doing that if

you're never informed of what is

required and what the expectations are?

On the flip side, I also had a recent

role where I started and I had gotten a

30 60 90 day plan given to me like 5

days before my first day. So I went into

day one knowing exactly what was

expected of me, knowing what my schedule

looked like. I had all the equipment

necessary and I was motivated to

do some work. So what you get is

if you prepare an employee and you allow

them to know what is expected, you're

going to get a highly motivated

workhorse. If you do not provide that,

you're going to get a highly anxious,

apathetic individual and that may only

last for that onboarding period, but it

might just carry into their entire

employment. So if you do a structured 30

6090, it eliminates confusion and sets

very clear expectations from day one.

Okay. So we're going to create that 30

609day plan. This is a structured

three-phase onboarding approach that

ensures new hires integrate to the team

smoothly and understand what the

they're there for. Think of the first 30

days as orientation and core learning.

Okay? They need to gather context. Yes,

of course they ask questions. You gave

them the spiel in the interview process.

I'm sure you sent them some about us

packet, but let's be real, that's all

That's not actually how the

company runs. That's not how

communication occurs. That's not where

they gain the insights on how to

communicate with the CEO versus the CMO

versus their direct manager. This is

when they're understanding the company

vision, the values, the workflows. This

is how the the sausage is made. This is

where they learn the core processes, the

systems. They see a content calendar,

asset management, maybe you use a sauna

or ClickUp to manage everything. They're

getting to understand and get a feel for

how you operate. I often like to give

smaller tasks. I don't want just, you

know, knowledge acquisition to occur

during this phase. I do want to give

them tasks. One, because I want to make

sure that they are able to execute. You

know, technical assessments are great,

but you really learn a lot in the first

30, 60, 90 days about an employee. I

want to make sure they're doing that,

but I also want to give them wins and

momentum that they can build upon. I

truly believe if you nailed the opening

30

days, you have such a better employee

employer relationship. Also, don't just

leave them on an island to themsel and

let them just figure it out. There's

very rare cases where that is the right

move. Maybe if that's what the role is

actually like all the time, okay, sure,

you could justify that to me. But if the

role is not going to be like that, make

sure that you do regular check-ins with

this individual. Ensure that they

understand what they're working on.

Understand what is happening on a

meeting. They understand who's in the

meeting, what the process looks like,

what the context of this project is.

Anything that is necessary for them to

be able to operate efficiently, you

should be providing in the check-in.

Also, you can be asking them how are

they feeling? Are they confused? Do they

feel overwhelmed, underwhelmed? Do they

need more information? Do they need to

chunk things down a little bit? This is

where you get to get a feel and a gauge

of where they're at and how they're

responding to these opening 30 days. For

example, if you hire an editor, this

might look like them shadowing your

senior editor or some experienced team

member and ultimately they're reviewing

high-erforming content from the past.

Maybe this editor they're shadowing is

walking them through their top five uh

YouTube videos of all time and

explaining why they got to that level

and how they're implementing those

frameworks and those structures to

future videos. And maybe potentially

it's working on internal projects or

rough cuts of an edit that you review

internally and that don't have high

stakes of going out publicly. All right.

Then you have the 60-day, the next 30

days. Well, what are we doing there?

This is where we want to have them

taking more ownership. What does that

look like? Well, they begin executing

independently on their core

responsibilities. They're no longer just

doing small tasks or just shadowing.

They're actually owning tasks of their

own. They're also developing their own

workflows and systems within the team.

We have teamwide process and workflow,

but then within that, individuals have

their own way of operating. Every editor

has a different way that they set up a

file, right? Some editors like to go

through all the A-roll and then start

adding music and then B-roll and blah

blah blah. Some of them like to go

section by section and they go A-roll,

B-roll, music, graphics, and then on to

the next section. Allow them to build

their own workflow and utilize that for

the greatest efficiency that they can

have. In these next 30 days, at the 60

mark, you're wanting to also analyze

their work. Look at how they're going

about their workflow, the process, their

communication, and the final output, and

give them feedback. This is where you

can start to reinforce the good things

and help correct the things that aren't

as effective or helpful for the team or

process they're working on. An example

here is a an editor would probably be

editing full YouTube videos, uploading

them, and then we would be reviewing the

performance and giving them feedback

accordingly. And then the last 30 days,

this is the 90-day mark, right? So we

have the 30, the 60, and the 90. And

this is chunked down into 30 days at a

time. And this is the last section of

their official onboarding. We are fully

integrating them into the team and

giving them a high level of

contribution. No longer are they working

on small tasks or owning their own task.

They're owning the big tasks. whatever

the number one most important thing that

we listed on the responsibilities on

their job description, they are now

owning that entirely. This also looks

like owning it entirely with minimal

supervision. Okay? So, instead of me

coming in and checking in on them during

the edit five or six times, I might

check in with them at the beginning like

I would any editor, maybe a midway point

and then upon completion. We're also now

at the point where they're demonstrating

actual results, like true impact they're

having against their KPIs that we're

holding them accountable for. You know,

if they're a YouTube editor, watch time.

Is the watch time at least average, if

not better than average, what our normal

performance is, or if it's slightly

below, are they improving the watch time

each video they're doing? I always am

looking for rate of progress. Are they

at least improving? If they're not where

we want them to be, are they moving in

that direction? And finally, at the end

of the 90 days, you want to actually

conduct a 90-day review. Sit down with

them, walk through everything that

they've done, tell them all the wins

they've had, all the things that you

love, the way they communicated, the way

Sarah said to John, you know, the

feedback on the edit, she gave it so

well. Great job, Sarah. Reinforce that

and make sure they continue to do those

things. But also, there may be things

that you noticed in the opening 90 days

that weren't as desirable or as

effective, and you want to correct

those. The last thing you want to do is

just ignore a problem and just hope that

it goes away. They don't go away, they

get bigger. And so, at this 90-day

check-in, this is where you want to give

them some very real feedback. If there's

something that they cannot continue

doing, tell them now. If you do not tell

them now and they continue doing it,

that is not their fault. That is your

fault. It is your job at this point to

inform them of any behavior changes that

need to occur. So, as an example, at

this point, if we have a content

strategist at 90 days in, they should be

identifying high performing content and

what we should double down on or how we

should reformat it for another platform.

They should be proposing new content

ideas, not just reviewing what is

working. They should be innovating and

coming up with fresh new ideas. And they

should be optimizing distribution for

maximum reach. and they should be able

to sit down with you and take feedback

on what they were doing right on all of

those and what they need to change on

all of those. So now that we have the

306090, well that's amazing, but that's

not the only part of onboarding. That is

a piece of the pie. That is a tool in

the belt, but it is not the entire belt.

So if we want to make onboarding

seamless and effective, one, we want to

provide a clear plan before day one. So

this is sending onboarding materials.

This is like a company handbook, a

vision deck, a a strategy deck, whatever

that looks like for you. And the 306090

that we just went through. Number two is

you're going to assign a mentor or

onboarding buddy. Often times, if you

don't assign this, they will make their

own friend there, right? And that's

great, but you want to make sure to also

intentionally pair them with somebody

who is going to really help them in the

role that they have. Ideally, somebody

who has a lot more context on the

organization and team and how they

function. typically a more senior

individual. This allows them to speed

ramp their learning but also have

somebody that is a guaranteed or

verified point of contact for when they

have questions because in the beginning

we have a multitude of questions and

typically we're afraid or embarrassed to

ask them. If you help assign this

individual and you clarify upfront that

this is what they are here for is to

help you ask questions or help you

answer questions and that there's

nothing wrong with asking questions.

it's actually encouraged to well then

you set them up for success and instead

of them sitting there trying to solve a

problem for 2 hours they might solve it

in 5 minutes asking Sarah what the

answer is. Now number three is to

schedule regular check-ins. You're not

going to have a pulse on how this person

is doing and how it's going if you're

not checking in with them regularly and

getting an update. I prefer typically in

the first month to do multiple check-ins

per week. So maybe it looks like instead

of one 30 minute meeting, it's three

10-minute meetings, Monday, Wednesday,

Friday, end of day. And you're just

checking in to see what was the most

interesting thing that you learned

today. What was uh the most confusing

thing that happened this week that I can

maybe answer? What roadblocks are in

front of you that I can bulldoze through

to make your job easier. This is also an

incredible opportunity to celebrate wins

and reinforce great actions. If they're

a new hireer and you're on a call, a

brainstorm meeting, let's say, and

you're beating up a YouTube video idea,

and they contribute a thought, even if

it's not a good one, but they actually

speak up, man, immediately give them

daps for that. Like, give them all the

love in the world for that because

that is the kind of action and behavior

you want to encourage, especially a new

hire. I remember there was a hire that I

made a couple years ago and I want to

say like day one he was sitting in a

meeting where nobody asked his opinion

on it. He volunteered it and in some

organizations they might not like that.

I immediately stood up and gave the dude

a high five. I was like this is

incredible. You're day one. You're

nervous as hell. You don't know anybody.

Nobody knows you. Nobody knows your

background or skill set and you're

already contributing to the overall

discussion. That's what we're hiring

people for. We're hiring people to

contribute, not sit and be a fly

on the wall. And number four is kind of

a bonus. I don't believe it's fully

necessary, but it's definitely very

helpful, but if you're resource

constrained, I would save this for when

you're at a bigger scale. Number four is

building an onboarding portal or

resource hub. And this can be fancy

like, you know, using some software to

automate the onboarding or it can be as

simple as a Google Drive folder

that has your vision deck, your strategy

deck, context on the team, SOPs,

playbooks, video tutorials on workflows,

Q&A document with the founder or CEO to

give more context on the organization.

Anything that you feel would help make

this person's life within the org easier

can live in this hub. And again, it can

be a very simple Google Drive folder. It

doesn't have to be anything fancy and

complex. Just like in the hiring

process, we want to define a role

clearly. We also want to ensure that

once somebody is onboarded, we also make

sure to continually define their role

clearly because as we know, roles

evolve, process evolves, needs evolve on

the team. And so as those evolutions

occur, you should be continually

updating the role description. And one

of the biggest mistakes I see on teams

is overlapping responsibilities without

clarity around who is owning what. And

so what ends up happening there is if

two people both think that they own the

same task, often times they assume the

other person's going to do it and then

nobody does it. And so what you want to

do is if you're going to have two people

working on a task, make sure it's very

clear what they're each owning and what

the expectations of output are from each

of them. hold them accountable. I like

to set KPIs for accountability, which

removes ambiguity in the performance of

their job expectations. Here's an

example. If you have a community manager

and their task is to analyze metrics,

right? They're supposed to look at how's

engagement, are we getting enough

impressions, are we driving enough

traffic to our website, etc., etc. But

then you also ask editors to do the same

thing. One, I mean, it it seems

incredibly inefficient and pointless,

but two, eventually you get to the point

where they're doing redundant work, and

what I have observed is they both get

frustrated by it, and then they both

don't do the task, and then nobody does

it, and it's not getting done. And so,

there are going to be tasks that you're

going to have overlap. That's

impossible, right? Like, there's going

to be tasks where multiple people have

to own different micro tasks that ladder

up to the big one. I understand there's

nuance to it, but I would really

encourage you if you are going to have

two people tackling the same task, make

sure there is clarity on what is

expected from each of them. So, we went

through all of this onboarding but

what does this actually mean for us?

What does this give us as a result?

Well, I'll tell you. You get faster ramp

up time. People are actually going to

get up to speed and able to execute on

their role at a high level much, much

faster. I can't tell you early on in my

career how many different roles that I

took that it took me like four or five

months to actually get to a point where

I was effectively creating for the team

that I was on. Not necessarily my fault,

but just due to a lack of a structured

onboarding process that the organization

did not have in place. Number two, the

most important thing, stronger

retention. It costs a lot of money to

lose an employee, like two and a half

times what they actually costed you

originally. Employees who feel supported

and cared for and actually have clear

understanding of what is expected of

them stay longer and perform better.

Number three is you typically get more

ownership and initiative. Clarity from

day one fosters confidence and

independent problem solving. This is

somebody who if a problem comes up

they're not just immediately running and

tapping on your shoulder and being like

Sarah how do I solve this? Right? They

are somebody who is going to if they

come to you they're going to come to you

with proposed solutions. So the key

takeaway here is I want you to change

the way you think of onboarding. It's

not about introducing process and

introducing team members. It's about

setting up new hires to win

early and often which benefits both them

and yourself. All right, we have defined

what we need. We've defined the roles.

We've hired the individuals and we have

onboarded them effectively.

Congratulations. You are killing

it. But now we have to develop and

retain this high performing team, right?

We brought all these amazing individuals

in, but we need to make sure that we

keep them and we give them an

environment that makes them want to stay

and feel like they are growing and

empowered rather than stifled and capped

at their growth. A strong team is not

just about hiring the right people,

though that is very, very important.

It's also about developing them into

leaders, lining up opportunities with

their individual long-term goals, not

just the companies, and ensuring that

they never stop growing. Always giving

them opportunity to further their growth

and see that where they are right now,

the ceiling is always moving up. So,

they're never limited with the amount of

growth they can have within your team.

If your team is not evolving, you're not

scaling, you're just maintaining. One of

the first things I can recommend in

trying to retain employees and keep them

on your team and keep them feeling

satisfied and like they're growing is

creating a culture of ownership. A lot

of individuals that have creative teams

out there really believe heavily, I

would argue too heavily in SOPs and

checklists. Now they are very important,

right? Checklists ensure quality

control. SOPs ensure that we are

operating in a very similar function and

similar way when operating on a process.

Okay, so this is super important. The

problem is if you build an army, I like

to call it a checklist army. You're

building individuals that only follow

instruction and don't take ownership for

themselves. I believe that high

performing teams thrive when they take

real ownership of their role. Instead of

waiting for direction from you, they are

taking action. They're solving problems.

They're innovating on content and ideas

themselves. If you are the only one

making decisions, you don't have a team.

You just have a bunch of assistants that

are running around doing your bidding.

You have what I call a topdown approach

rather than a bottom up approach. So,

here is how you encourage ownership on

your team instead of doing what we all

want to do because we care about

everyone on our team. I mean, every

person I've ever hired, and whether or

not you you with this, I don't give

a I love them to death. I care

about every person I've ever hired an

insane amount. And so what sometimes

occurs then is you want to solve

problems for them. You want to make

their life easier, but that them

up. So what you want to do to create a

culture of ownership is you actually

want to not solve their problems. When

they come to you with a question or a

problem, instead of being like, "Here's

the answer. Here's the solution right

away." You put it back on them. Ask

them, "Well, how would you handle this?

If I got hit by a bus right now, how

would you handle this?" If I was out

sick for 3 weeks, how would you handle

it? If I went on vacation for two

months, what would you do to solve this

problem? Oftentimes, they know the

answer or they're creative enough to be

able to solve it. Typically, what you're

finding is they might be being just

slightly lazy or more than likely

they've been in a previous environment

where their leader did solve all their

problems because their leader didn't

trust them. And if you start noticing

that they just bring a bunch of problems

to you, encourage them to stop bringing

problems and start bringing solutions.

So if they're constantly asking you how

to solve something, encourage them to

move from asking you how to solve to

being like, "Which of these two or three

solves would you recommend I try?" That

is going to be far better. But then

again, I would recommend that you put it

back on them and say, "Well, which of

the three do you think is going to be

most effective?" And third, give them

autonomy with accountability. Meaning,

empower them to make a mistake. If

you're going to ask them, how would you

go about solving it? They present the

idea. You might know that's not going to

work. But if it's not absolutely

missionritical, I would encourage you

let them fail. They will learn so much

more from that than from always getting

it right based on what you say. And the

crazier part, and a lot of people don't

realize this, but they are paying

attention to what you are doing. They're

seeing here that you trust them and you

trust them despite a potentially not

correct or not ideal outcome. When you

do this, you empower them to gain

confidence and continue to solve

problems. And when they realize that

there's not a consequence to them

getting it wrong and that you're just

going to encourage them to go about it

differently next time, they have no

fear. And when you don't have fear, that

is when creativity thrives. Creativity

is not only important for creating

content, it's important for solving

problems. As an example, I once had a

creative director who was technically

incredible, right? A a brilliant mind,

an incredible strategist. But I'm gonna

be honest with you, they lacked a lot of

personal skills and ability to read

another person in the moment. And so a

lot of times when we would be filming

with the talent we worked for, this

individual would ask me, "How do I

handle this situation?" And a lot of

times it was in the moment, right? And

so instead of them just like verbally

asking me, they were texting me. And I

started to notice that I was answering

it always. I was solving it for them.

And what I realized was three months

into doing that, they had not improved.

They always listened to me. They acted

on what I said, but they kept asking

questions at the same rate. And so what

did I do? I started saying, "Well, how

would you handle this?" And sometimes

this person would say something that I

knew was going to piss the talent we

were working with off, like that,

potentially interrupting the entire

shoot, and maybe we wouldn't actually

get a video that day. short-term bummer,

long-term gain. What ended up happening

is he learned from his mistakes and

started to be able to figure out how to

solve the problem on his own to the

point now where he is leading the

initiative for that individual and knows

how to engage with them and handle any

problems that come up very effectively

without texting me. Now, we've

identified that we want to build and

empower these leaders, right? Well, how

do we develop people as a leader? I

believe that teaching is actually an

ultimate hack here. Now, not in maybe

the way that you're thinking. I love

team training, but I don't like to lead

it myself. Not all the time. Of course,

I'm going to do team trainings here and

there. Uh it's important to hear from

your leader and to hear straight from

the horse's mouth. But I actually

believe that the best version of this is

when you empower the team to do team

trainings. Okay? There's so many

benefits to this and we're going to go

through many of them. So, why does this

work? Well, I think a lot of us have

probably heard the traditional saying,

but it's traditional for a reason. It's

true. You learn a lot by teaching. And

so, giving people on your team the

ability to train others and teach others

allows them the opportunity to learn

more about that, to really ingrain that

learning into their repertoire, into

their utility belt. It teaches mastery.

If you can't actually explain something,

you don't fully understand it. You might

be able to do the action. An example is

editors. A very early entry-level editor

who isn't super experienced or

technically proficient if you ask them,

why did you cut this video in this

cadence, right? Why did you go 12

frames, 36 frames, 12 frames, 36 frames

as a cadence, in a sequence? I got

really technical there, so please just

ignore it if you don't speak editor

lingo. But if that's the case and you

ask them why they did that, a lot of

beginners and novice editors will say it

felt right. And that's a totally

acceptable answer, but it's not a

technically sound one. An editor who

truly understands would say, I was

training the audience to understand and

expect the cadence that I was going to

edit in because the next scene was going

to be very dramatic and I was going to

break that pattern. And by training the

audience to get used to cuts on that

pattern, when we deviate from the

pattern, it emphasized that moment. That

would be an editor who is very

technically proficient, experienced, and

understands the why behind why they did

the cut. And the magical third thing

that you get here, which is absolutely

incredible, is you reveal hidden

strengths and passions. I can't tell you

how many different times that I'd have

somebody on one of my teams, they would

do a training on something that I had no

idea that they were really proficient in

and were passionate about. You learn all

these interesting things, like people

that love sound design, and all of a

sudden you realize, oh yeah, that's

right. All your edits are really good

with sound design. Or you discover that

somebody's really passionate about

storytelling, and you realize, huh, now

that they think about it, all of your

videos actually do follow a very, very

specific and strategic storytelling

framework. Holy And then you get

to spread that information to the rest

of the team. And what happens is they

start to develop their brand within the

team. And so if somebody does a

presentation on storytelling, for

example, and George, another editor, has

a question about it, they're going to go

to that person. And so what that does is

increase efficiency. Rather than sitting

and trying to solve a problem on your

own, you know who on the team is the

subject matter expert to go to to solve

the problem with. Now, how do you

actually implement this? Well, I would

recommend that you conduct a weekly

training. Rotate between the different

members of your team on who leads the

training weekly. I also recommend

setting up what is called like a

mentorship loop. This is where you take

somebody that is more senior on the team

and you pair them with a more junior

level individual. This doesn't mean uh

seniority as far as tenure, but as far

as skill set. So maybe you have a

videographer that's been on the team for

a year and then you hire a brand new

videographer who is far more technically

proficient. I would recommend pairing

them together. The cool byproduct of

that is the new videographer, she can

help train him on technical

proficiencies and he can help train her

on proficiencies on how to operate

within the organization and how

processes work. You get a win-win on

both sides. Now, oftentimes when you're

hiring an employee, we're humans, so

we're selfish. We're thinking about

what's in it for us. What are we trying

to get out of this person? How can we

maximize the returns from this human?

But what I would recommend is gain

understanding on what their long-term

career goals are and start to line up

opportunities that you give them with

those long-term goals. If they want to

be in a place of leadership or they want

to hold an executive role and they're an

editor right now, well, something that

would be very good for you to do is give

them those training opportunities so

they can gain the skill of communication

and presenting. Often times, especially

with creative teams, there's this like

myth out there that, oh, creatives don't

want to talk to anybody. they just want

to be locked in a room and d and I

believe that that is true but my belief

is the why behind that is because

they've been trained they've been told

that's how they are they work for an

organization and the organization never

gives them the opportunity to

communicate with clients or with the

whole team they never give them

presenting opportunities because they

say well creatives don't like to do that

so we're not going to give them the

opportunity whatever their desired

outcome is for their career it is your

job if you want to hold on to them for a

long time to make sure that you give

them opportunities to grow towards that.

If you have somebody on your team that

has expressed what they want to

accomplish and what you are doing and

the opportunities you're providing them

are actually going in the opposite

direction, what you're going to have is

somebody who becomes very dissatisfied

with their role and will want to leave

at any opportunity they have. Stop being

like most leaders and start knowing what

your people what your team wants. This

is why creative teams lose great people.

It's usually not because of like the

work output and stuff. It's because they

no longer see themselves growing towards

where they want to be. In fact, often

times they see themselves growing away

from where they're wanting to be. And

that is the exact opposite of what a

human is going to prefer and choose to

do because ultimately, like I said at

the top, we are all selfish and we want

to accomplish what we want to

accomplish. Make sure you align the work

and opportunities you give your team

with what they want to accomplish. So, I

recommend doing this by conducting

one-on ones. And here are a couple of

great questions that I love to ask

during a one-on-one. Question number

one, very, very basic and obvious, but

most of you don't ask it. What's your

long-term career goal? Shocker. If you

find that out, the amazing thing is you

can give them opportunities that move

them towards that that also serve the

company. Where do you see yourself after

this? Do you see yourself at another

company? Do you see yourself starting

another company? Do you want to jump to

a different industry? Are you wanting to

experiment with different roles? What is

it that you're wanting to accomplish

directly after this? You've already

asked what their long-term career goal

is, but between then and now, what do

you see? And third, what skills do you

want to develop? Is there anything that

you've been interested in? Right? If

they're a video editor, but they're

really passionate about motion graphics,

how cool would it be to be able to give

them more opportunities? Maybe you're

not able to make them a full-time motion

designer because that's not what's

required on your team for the content

you're producing. But maybe what you can

do is say, "Well, I mean, it would be

cool if we made our lower thirds a

little bit more fancy and we did some

cool transitions and maybe we got a

little bit crazier with how we animate

text." Okay, cool. You're giving them an

opportunity to hone in on the skill that

they care about most and where they're

wanting to go. And then what you're

going to get as a byproduct of that is

them sticking around a lot longer. So

the goal here is ultra simple. Make sure

you align their growth with what they're

doing daily. If they feel like they're

just checking boxes and doing tasks,

they will eventually check the out.

A really good example of this is I had

somebody who was at a manager level on

one of my teams that really expressed in

the opening like literally in the

interview process expressed that they

eventually wanted to be a CEO and they

wanted to uh have a pretty large

organization that they ran and at this

point they were at a manager level and

so what did I do? I started to give them

more opportunities to oversee the team

or a section of the team entirely. So,

not just a manager level, but I gave

them a lot of the responsibilities that

I had without necessarily giving them a

director title right away. One, just to

prove that they can do it and make sure

that we were putting them in the right

spot, but I wanted to give them the

opportunity to start to hone in on

skills that were necessary and more

importantly to be able to identify

deficiencies they had that they needed

to work on to eventually get to the

point where they would be a CEO. Now,

your jackof alltrades, your generalists

or your specialists who are willing to

generalize, that's going to work in the

early days. And it's actually not only

going to work, it's necessary. You can't

hire specialists entirely from day one,

unless you know, you just got unlimited

money and really deep pockets. But even

then, I wouldn't advise doing that. But

eventually, you get to a point where

specialists are the way that you're

going to actually drive real results,

right? We talked in the content section

about specializing content to specific

platforms. We talked about how in the

beginning you make content like you

might make a short and then you

distribute that on all the different

platforms. YouTube shorts, Instagram

reels, Tik Tok, Facebook reels, LinkedIn

video tab. But the best case version of

this is you take that same asset, that

same raw footage and re-edit it, remake

it contextual to each platform

specialization. Well, the same thing is

going to happen with your team. In order

to make that content special to the

platform, you're going to need the

individual to specialize in that

platform. Here's why this matters. When

you move from the generalist workflow to

a specialist workflow, you get

individuals who execute at much higher

levels. They gain massive efficiency by

doing the same thing or relatively same

thing over and over and over rather than

hat jumping. They really iron out all

the kinks, all the weird inefficiencies.

They develop beautiful workflows on this

because they're doing it all day every

day. Also, this leads to mastery, which

reduces the amount of revisions and back

and forth that you have to have with

your team. You would not believe how

effective it is and efficient it is if

you can eliminate two rounds of

revisions across all your editors on

your team. Sure, in a week that was

nice, but add up all that time over a

year and you're saving weeks of your

time. The benefit for the individual is

that specialists have way more long-term

career value. They are able to earn far

more throughout their career because

they are a specialist. Companies will

pay far more for that than somebody who

is decent or proficient at everything.

So, by you investing in them as a

specialist, you know, the reality is is

unfortunately there's all these people

that we love that we have on our team

and we want them forever, but they're

not going to stay with you forever. The

the nature of a career and of a job is

that there is an expiration date most of

the time. It is my goal if you join my

team, I want to set you the up so

that when you go to the next spot, you

are 10 times better than you could have

ever imagined. And the way you do that

is you promote specialization. they will

typically be far happier and earn way

more throughout their career. Here's an

example of this, and this is pretty

typical that I find in creatives, but

specifically short form editors for

whatever reason. Trevor on my team, I

hired him about three three and a half

years ago now. And I remember we brought

him on as a short form editor. about I'm

probably going to get this wrong, but

let's call it 9 to 12 months in, he

started getting to the point where he

had mastered how we do short form and

was absolutely crushing it and started

noticing the editors that were working

on long form content and how sexy that

looked and how interesting and shiny

that was. And around 14 to 16 months in,

he started vocalizing to me how he was

considering wanting to move from being a

short form editor to a long form editor.

Now, a little bit of context for you is

at this point, we had reached a serious

level of mastery to where he was the

go-to guy on the team for shorts. In

fact, so much so that every other short

form editor whenever they ran into an

issue would go to Trevor to help solve

the problem. And so what I proposed to

Trevor is two different paths. I said,

"Dude, like you're an A player. You're a

gangster. I want to keep you around and

happy. So I'll move you over to long

form if that's what you want." Now, it

won't happen overnight because we are a

business and we have needs, but we can

transition you if that's what you want.

The way this will work is if you move

over to long form, you're going to go to

the bottom of the totem pole. You're

going to the very bottom of the ladder.

Okay? Like there's already some serious

gangsters over there and you're not as

experienced in it. So, you're going to

be starting from zero. Now, on the flip

side, you could continue down this

editing short form path. Right now,

you're the top dog. And I see very soon

in your future you managing all of the

short form editors. not only being the

person that they come to with their

problems and helping them solve and the

one who always ends up having the most

viewed clips, but you actually manage

them. Now, a little bit more additional

context. This was young as

He was 22 when we were having this

conversation. A 22-year-old managing

editors that were like six, seven years

older than him potentially. This was a

crazy crossroads for him. And I told

him, I said, I believe that if you

specialize, you will go into a place of

leadership that there's not a world

where you'll get there if you go over to

YouTube. That will take years for you to

establish here. We're already 2 months

out from this. And if you go up to that

level, then eventually if you want to do

a lateral move over to long form, you

move over there in a totally different

position. And so you're not starting

from zero. You're starting from a place

of leadership. it's a completely

different position for you to take. And

so he chose to stick with short form.

Now, we gave him some long form edits

here and there because he's a creative

guy and he wanted to do it to the best

of my ability. Whenever somebody on my

team vocalizes an interest or something

they're passionate about and want to do,

I want to do my best to give them that

opportunity. That's just how I like to

roll. But we focused on short form. And

guess what? He not only was promoted to

senior editor, he was then promoted to

lead editor. So he was promoted the most

out of anybody on the team and he was

managing three different editors at the

age of 22 and 23. It was absurd.

Okay, he only got that because he chose

to specialize. And now we're at a point

in his career where he is starting to

expand and be more of a generalist

again. And so the way that this will

most likely work is he'll have a couple

of years or a season of time where he

does more activities and then he'll

focus again and he'll pick probably one

lane or two that he goes more narrow and

gains more mastery on. It's very similar

if you notice to the accordion framework

or method that I use for content, but

you can do the same thing with your

career. Another thing that I would

highly encourage you to do is not only

utilize your team members to educate and

train each other, but invest in

strategic education opportunities for

your team. For example, if there is a

workshop on YouTube retention editing

that you can pay for with somebody who

you know worked really closely with Mr.

Beast, for example, I would highly

recommend that you invest in that. And

then what you do is instead of you

taking that course, you assign one or

two of your team members to do it.

Here's the pro tip. Don't just have them

go and attend and consume the workshop

or the course. Have them then turn it

into a team training that they present

to the rest of the team. Again, we've

already gone over this helps them retain

the information far more, helps them

develop mastery, and then they're able

to share all of those insights and

information with the rest of the team

rather than hogging it all for

themselves. So, we've talked about doing

regular check-ins, but what does that

look like? Well, it looks like running

effective one-on- ones. I believe that

if you only check in when something's

going wrong, you've already lost.

Consistent, structured feedback is what

keeps people from checking out. It's

what keeps people engaged and feeling

like this is an area where I'm growing

and my leadership cares about me and

cares that I'm actually developing and

growing rather than just staying

stagnant and letting me rot. In

order to do this, you need to run

effective 101 ones. So, here is how I

recommend you go about running effective

one-on- ones. Number one, talk about the

workload and blockers. How's your

workload look right now? What's slowing

you down? Do you need any extra

resources or support? Is there anything

currently getting in the way of you

accomplishing your job? Can I bulldoze

through any roadblocks to make your job

easier? Revisit their long-term goals.

You're crushing this thing. How do we

set you up for the next step? What is it

that you've been wanting to learn but

haven't had the time to invest in? Are

there any interests that line up with

your long-term goals that we're not

currently leveraging right now that

we're not giving you opportunities to

gain skill in that maybe we can

implement that would be effective for

our content? I had a content strategist

who was unbelievably good at running Tik

Tok, ideulating, and creating a lot of

engagement on that platform. They had

expressed interest in being a creative

director. And so I started giving them

opportunities to begin developing bigger

campaigns and presenting those

campaigns. Not just developing them, but

presenting them to myself and to the

talent that we were filming with. The

reason why this happened though was in

our regular one-on- ones, I was asking

them, "Well, okay, you've come in,

you're killing it as a strategist here.

You own this platform. You've told me

you want to be a creative director.

Right now, none of what you're doing is

really lading up to that. you're very

much an individual contributor here. And

so what we did is in our 101, we

developed a plan of how they were going

to start taking on bigger tasks that

involved more people. So when you're

developing a campaign and pitching a

campaign, you're not thinking about just

your sole contribution, you're thinking

about how the entire team feeds into

that campaign because it was a

multiplatform approach. And in doing so,

what we allow for is not only for them

to gain the skills of thinking

strategically of how to involve other

people, but how to persuade other people

to get involved and how to think about

workflow and process, ultimately lading

up to their long-term goal and vision of

being a creative director. None of this

would have happened if we didn't

actually do regular check-ins to see,

are they actually feeling like they're

moving closer to their desired outcome?

and am I following what I preach and

actually giving them opportunities to be

able to hone in those skills. So, here

are the final takeaways on this section.

Developing a team that grows with you.

Number one, push ownership down. If

you're making every decision, you don't

have a team. You have a bunch of

assistants. Let them start to own the

process and solve their problems. Number

two, make leadership a habit. Teaching

and leading trainings should be part of

the job, not your job, their jobs. Okay?

Typically, this is an afterthought. You

want to make this a priority. Number

three, tie their growth to the company's

growth. Let them see how what they're

doing contributes to the overall growth

of the company and the team. Especially

with content teams, a lot of times

they're like the weirdos in the cage in

the corner. It's like, don't feed the

crazy creatives, right? No, you want to

show them how what they're doing is

leading to the revenue and profitability

that your organization has. Number four,

go deep, not wide. As soon as you can,

promote specialization. This is

beneficial for you and your team as well

as them, the individual. This makes them

far more valuable to any future

employer. And number five, none of this

is going to happen. You're not going to

be able to measure progress if you don't

do structured check-ins. So have the

one-on ones. Give them feedback. Ask

them for feedback on how you're doing as

a leader. If you choose not to make time

for feedback, you'll eventually have to

make time for hiring. If you create a

culture of ownership, of growth, and

something where they know where they're

headed, and they actually feel like the

opportunities they're getting are lining

up with their career goals, you're not

just going to have a team of employees.

You're going to have a team that wants

to build and can build with you. All

right, the final section on building

your team is building a strong team

culture. This is so important. I

will not be able to emphasize it enough,

but I'm going to do my best. I'll tell

you this, a good team culture is not

built by accident. A lot of team

cultures are built by accident, but a

good one is not. It's shaped by

intentional decisions that you make

every day through leadership, actions,

and how you communicate with the team.

And if you do it right, it's not just a

buzzword that everyone likes to

talk about on Instagram to sound like a

thought leader. It actually becomes the

operating system of how your team works

and how you make decisions. This is how

you grow. In building this strong

culture, you need to define and then

once you've defined, you need to

reinforce the core values. A strong

culture starts with clear core values

that guide your hiring, your decision-m,

and your day-to-day behavior. These are

not just words up on a wall or

that exist on your website. These are

literally what you live by and how you

decide what you will and will not do.

So, here's how to reinforce your core

values once you have established them.

Make sure you hire based on alignment

with those core values, not just

alignment on skill set. Again, like we

said earlier, skills can be trained.

Values very, very hard to change. Number

two, recognize and reward actions that

reflect company values. One of the best

ways to do this is to publicly celebrate

team members who are actively upholding

the values that you've defined as a

company. And this can look like a

message in in Slack, shouting somebody

out in front of the whole team. This can

look like during a full team meetup

recognizing them and giving them a

gift card or an award. There's

so many different ways to do this, but

we all know the feeling when you are

publicly recognized for something that

you did well. It feels good and

it makes you want to do more of it. And

number three, don't be the

leader that says all this and does

completely different. Those are the

worst. They breed no trust and everyone

eventually wants to leave that team

because they know that they are part of

horseshit. That's just the reality. And

there's a lot of these leaders out

there. The majority of people that lead

a company preach these core values but

don't actually uphold them themselves.

Lead by example. I remember a really

good story actually is um back in my uh

church days, I was on a worship team.

The worship team is like the band that

plays the music before the sermon

happens. And I remember the youth pastor

said something so powerful to me and it

stuck and it it's how I've thought of

myself in any leadership role to date.

Caleb, when you are up on stage playing

bass in the worship team, everyone in

the youth group is looking at you as an

example. And whatever you do, they're

going to do 10 times. And how I apply

that to leadership is if I am slow to

respond, they're going to be slower to

respond. If I show up late to meetings,

they're going to show up really late to

meetings. If we're a remote work

environment and I show up on calls all

the time in my PJs, guess what they're

going to do? Show up in their PJs. And

maybe that's fine in your company

culture, but maybe it's not. Whatever

you do, they're going to do times 10.

Lead by example. If you have a team that

is operating in a way that you do not

like, take a look at yourself and how

you're operating as the first point.

More than likely, you are leading them

by example in the wrong way. And just

because you're the leader doesn't mean

that you can hold yourself to a

different standard. If anything, you

need to be the one that holds the

standard and sets it and maintains that

bar as high as possible. So, for

example, maybe contrary to some of the

like, you know, hardcore examples I've

been using here, Patagonia has a really

beautiful team culture. They prioritize

environmental responsibility, integrity,

and work life balance. And guess what?

They actually do it. So, here's

how they reinforce those core values.

They hire for alignment, right? They

prioritize candidates who are passionate

about sustainability and outdoor

activism. That's the DNA of the company

and the brand. And so they want to make

sure that the people that work on it

also are in alignment with those values.

Number two is they recognize and reward

employees. Employees who contribute to

the environmental causes or develop

innovative solutions for sustainability

are actually publicly celebrated and

even receive grants to further their

initiatives whether it's within or

outside of the organization. And for

leading by example, their founder sets

the standard by literally running the

company with the same principles that he

lives by. Giving 1% of sales to the

planet. He even closes the office on

powder days to give employees the

opportunity to go serve or go skiing.

And he treats his work like it's a

mission, not just an activity that he's

doing to get a paycheck. Now, the next

point here is to be transparent about

decisions. You're never going to have a

scenario where everyone agrees with

every decision that you make. That is

okay. But what I would recommend is

trying your very best to provide them

the understanding of why you made the

decision. The quickest way that leaders

lose trust is keeping their team in the

dark when there's a lot of changes

occurring. So, here's what transparency

actually looks like in leadership. If a

project gets canled, especially last

minute, explain why and how it impacts

the bigger picture. I remember one time

having an editor who had been working 13

hours a day on a project for probably 5

or 6 days straight. Huge edit. She had

put so much effort into it. It was an

incredible piece. But the person we were

editing it for didn't like it. But it

sucked for this editor. And instead of

me just cancing the upload and not

giving them the why, I explain to them

how we want to create a an environment

for the talent we're working with where

they trust us. And the way that we earn

that trust is if there is a piece of

content that they don't like and they

don't want to be put out, we abide by

that. We honor that. If we do that, they

are going to feel more comfortable

opening up and revealing more and being

more transparent and vulnerable with

their emotions in future content because

they know if they don't like it, it's

not going to go out. But in that

scenario, rather than just leaving her

in the dark and being like, "Hey, I know

you spent 6 days, 13 hours a day working

on this and now last minute I'm coming

in and cutting this." I explained the

why of why we were cutting it and why

this impacts future content and how

it'll make our team more effective

moving forward. Number two is own your

mistakes. Man, if I could say this one

like 20 times in a row, I would. I can't

tell you how many times that I've had

leaders in my life that make a mistake

and just brush it off or acknowledge it

as it's like, "Oh, well, that was part

of the plan. That was intentional. We

meant to do that all along." Everyone

sees through your They already

know that you weren't intentionally

trying to make that mistake. That was

not part of the plan. Don't around

and try and make yourself posture

yourself to be smarter than you are.

Just to own it when you're wrong. The

amount of times that you're going to

gain respect from people when you do

that is zero. When you actually own your

mistake and you admit it to the team,

the amount of respect you gain is

infinite. It's unmeasurable. I am not in

any way perfect. Very much flawed. But I

really always try to do my best. When I

something up, even when it's small,

I immediately try to own it with the

team. I try to be the first person to

call it out because we've all been in

the scenario where somebody messes

something up and you're on a group call

and you're all kind of like vaguely

hinting at what happened, but not I want

to be the person that immediately says,

"No, I this up. I can't believe I

did it. It caused all these problems.

Here's how we're going to move forward."

And lastly, I highly recommend

communicate pivots as soon as you can.

Don't wait until the last minute. A lot

of leaders, I think, procrastinate on

this conversation because they're afraid

of how the team is going to respond. If

you have to make some big pivot in how

the team is going to operate, in output,

in process, in cadence, whatever, it's a

freaky thing. Like, humans get used to

it. We're creatures of habit, right? And

so, when you come in to the team and

say, "We're going to do things

completely differently." It sucks. Do it

immediately. The sooner that you

do it, the more time you give your team

to be able to digest this and accept the

fact that they're going to have five

times the amount of videos needing to go

out per week rather than telling them

the week before that you're going to do

it. Ultimately, the theme you're

noticing here is transparency. Be more

transparent with your team. Share more

with them. The more that you trust them,

the more that they will return the favor

and trust you. Another great thing that

you can do as a leader is pay attention

to what your team cares about. If

somebody on your team mentions the fact

that they love Legos, maybe you

take note of that and on their birthday

you send them the Millennium Falcon uh

Lego set, right? Like something absurd

like that that shows that like you care

about them outside of work and you pay

attention to what they care about and

are passionate about beyond just

editing. For example, another thing that

I love to do that I think is very

contrary to the majority of leaders is

if one of my team members mentions to me

that they're sick, rather than being

skeptical and not believing them and

assuming that they're just trying to,

you know, cash in the day, take the day

off, I actually like to go a really far.

I like to send them soup and bread or a

pack of juices from like Prest or

something of that nature. I want to show

them that I care about them because I

do. It's not just an act. It's actually

just taking what is in here in my heart

and putting it external. And this is

amazing because if they're truly sick,

cool. You're helping them get better.

You show that they care and you give

them the freedom to be able to take the

day to relax and rest rather than being

anxious the whole time. And on the flip

side, if they are that very unique

individual that's lying, they're going

to feel really guilty about it

and probably not want to do it the next

time. And so either way, you win. And

lastly, I believe that you inspire

loyalty in your team by providing them

opportunities to grow. We're humans.

We're selfish. We want to look out for

our self-interest and what we get out of

it. And that's okay. So, make sure that

on your team, you provide individuals

the ability to scratch their selfish

itch and grow. Ultimately, the best

teams aren't just efficient, they're

invested in the mission. And this only

happens when people see a future for

themselves within the organization. And

they only see a future for themselves

within the organization if they see

continual growth. So here are three

different ways that you can help build a

culture of growth. Like I've previously

said, but I'm going to emphasize it

right now. Make sure to tie what

individuals are doing to how the company

is growing. Make sure every single team

member sees how their individual

contributions lead to the company's

growth. Number two, check in regularly

on their career goals and aspirations.

Ensure that they are actually growing.

We talked about that earlier, but what's

amazing about doing that is the

byproduct is they are loyal as to

you if you actually genuinely care. Why

would they want to leave? Why would they

leave somebody who is experienced

further in their career, understands a

lot of the landmines they're going to

have to navigate through their career,

and that actually cares about their

growth, and wants to see them reach

their full potential and their goals.

Nobody's going to leave that. And

thirdly, we haven't really touched on

this. Give people stretch opportunities.

Push them. Make them uncomfortable. Give

them opportunities that they would not

imagine on their own that they could

accomplish. What this does is one, it

gives them opportunity to grow. Cool.

Amazing. But it also shows them that you

trust them. Trust begets trust. When you

show your team that you trust them, they

will show you in return trust to you.

Like I've said, I try to ask every new

hire on any team that I'm running, what

do you want to accomplish in your

career? What is your career goal? And

this isn't just blowing smoke. It's

literally how we tailor projects and

opportunities for the individual working

on the team. This accelerates their

growth, accelerates their loyalty, and

it makes them want to contribute more

and help other people on the team

realize their goals as well. One element

of building a strong team culture is

building an effective culture. Typically

on creative teams, you have a lot of

individuals that are individual

contributors. They're makers. And often

times in organizations, those makers get

because people set up random

meetings throughout the day. For a lot

of individuals, a meeting is no big

deal. You hop on and then you got the

next meeting. Maybe you have a 30-minute

gap. Okay, cool. I'll do some like

random little assa tasks, send some

emails, whatever. If you're a creator,

you're a maker, that ruins everything

because your whole goal is to get into

the flow state. And if you get into the

flow state and you're editing and time

is nothing, it's non-existent and you're

just killing it. And then all of a

sudden, ding, that Google calendar

notification says meeting in 10 minutes.

Well, boom, done. It's over. Then you

hop onto the call. Amazing. Awesome.

Call happens. And then you try and get

back in the edit. It's going to take you

30 to 45, maybe even upwards of an hour

to get back into that same state that

you were in before. And so what I

recommend you do for your team culture

is implement what Paul Graham created

which is the maker manager schedule. And

basically what it is is it identifies

that there are two different types of

individuals within an org. You have

makers and managers. Managers are

typically people that are managing teams

and they get done by having

meetings. Meetings actually are

literally integral to their role. If

they don't have meetings, they're not

getting anything done. On the flip side,

a

maker, meetings are their enemy. All the

editors and creatives watching this are

like nodding their heads. Their

heads are going to roll off their neck

right now. They're like, "Yeah, meetings

suck. Half the time I don't even

contribute. I don't even get information

that is necessary other than for 5

minutes of the call." And then the other

25 minutes was completely unnecessary.

The issue is there's no problem with

either. Neither one is right or wrong.

The problem is when either one tries to

function within the other one's setup.

Okay? So when a maker gets pulled into a

manager schedule or when a manager gets

pulled into a maker schedule. Now

typically within organizations like I

said you have both. It's not like you

have a team only of makers or only of

managers. Neither would be possible. So

what I recommend doing is creating maker

manager schedule. Now, the way that I

typically like to operate, and you can

mold this to whatever works best for you

and your team, but the way that I

operate is the first half of the day is

your maker time. So, for me, this looks

like usually 7:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. I'm

in maker mode. This is when I am working

on drafting things like this, or maybe

I'm writing a script for a future video,

or I'm reviewing a script for a client

and giving them notes on how they could

improve it. That is my maker time. And I

do my best to not interrupt anybody on

my team and pull them into a meeting

during maker time. That is reserved.

That is holy and sacred time for them to

do their thing. Now, you do need some

manager time. Meetings, unfortunately,

have to occur. I say unfortunately cuz I

think now I'm in a season where I'm a

little bit more in a a maker uh mode

than manager as much, but they're

important and they have to occur. So,

typically the way I run my schedule is

12 to 5 is my manager time. This is

where I try to schedule all my meetings.

Now, do I hold to this perfectly? No.

One of our partners is in the UK and so

because of that time difference, there's

one day a week where I have a meeting at

8:00 a.m. But if you are intentional and

you create this system, you empower the

team to be able to follow that. You

empower your editors, your designers,

your strategists to be able to actually

have five, six, seven hours of

uninterrupted flow work. It's incredible

the level of efficiency that you get.

Also, the team loves it. They

they prefer it so much. And typically,

what you'll find is they actually end up

pushing you towards making one day a

week an entire maker day. And what I

like to do is I usually have Wednesdays

be that day. So Monday would be a

meeting day or a manager day and I would

stack as many calls as I could

on that day to try and have as few the

rest of the week cuz once you're in that

mode, you might as well just like suffer

entirely. But then on Tuesday, I would

operate in the morning as my maker time.

And then usually the back half, like 2

to 5 would be manager time. Wednesdays,

I'd block entirely for maker time. And

then Thursday would follow and Friday

would follow the same exact schedule as

Tuesday. There's probably an icon that's

popped up that breaks this down. We have

a little playbook for you on this

that'll walk you through how to build

your maker and manager schedule. I can't

emphasize the importance of this enough.

You will gain so much efficiency and

your team will be much happier with

their work if you operate this way. So,

we've talked a lot about hiring,

onboarding, and culture. Right now, one

thing that we haven't discussed or

touched on yet is the great debate that

has basically started to take place in

society since 2020. And that is remote

work versus inerson or hybrid. And I

think there are a lot of benefits and

detractors to all three. And so what I

want to do is walk through a couple of

different factors that you're going to

be thinking about when deciding or

determining whether or not you're going

to be a remote work uh team, a hybrid

team, or an in-person team. And so we're

going to walk through these different

factors, and I'm going to give you just

a couple of points on it. Again, this is

a sheet that you can download. I think

this will be very useful for you to use.

This is an important thing to get right.

And when I say get right, I'm actually

going to explain that a little bit more.

It's not that there is a right or wrong

way. There's not. All of them work. All

of them have downsides to it. The key is

to make sure that you are very

intentional about how you go about doing

this. The way you build culture remotely

is far different than in person. You

have to be a lot more intentional and

thoughtful remotely because as we all

know, there's amazing moments in person

when you're just walking through the

office and you happen to pass by that

employee and you just randomly embark on

a 20-minute conversation where you learn

a lot about them, right? You're able to

pour into them, help answer or solve a

problem they are encountering. That

doesn't really happen as much by

accident remotely. It's not like you're

just like walking through the Zoom rooms

and happen to stumble upon someone. Like

that's not how it works. And so you have

to be more intentional with how you set

up meetings, check-ins, etc. So factor

number one is flexibility. Okay? And for

remote work, the flexibility is

unbelievably high, right? Employees can

work from anywhere. They're adaptable

with their schedules. It allows the

employee to be very flexible. This is

viewed, in my opinion, as a benefit. By

doing this, you actually in some

instances can pay lower than typical

market rates because this is a huge

benefit for some individuals. There's a

lot of people out there that are parents

that maybe have young ones and they want

to be able to be home around their kids.

It doesn't mean that they're not

working. It just means that if their

kid, you know, starts puking or

something like that, they can actually

take care of it, right? It also cuts

down on commute costs for them. There's

a whole lot of benefits that play out

for the employee and the company. Now,

for inperson, the flexibility is pretty

low. Let's be real. These are typically

fixed hours and a required location that

you are working at. Now, there's a lot

of benefits to this, as we'll see. And

now that we live in a world where a lot

of people have become accustomed to

remote work, this is something that a

lot of different teams are finding

difficult. Now, hybrid is a little bit

of a medium here. Uh, and that's kind of

what you're going to find is hybrid for

all of these is kind of like a happy

medium between both. This is a mix of

remote work and office work. This is far

more flexible, but provides enough

structure that maybe the company might

feel a little bit more comfortable with

that cadence. A lot of individuals that

run companies have this fear that if

people are fully remote, how do I know

that they're actually working, right?

And so the hybrid model allows you to be

able to see them in action maybe two or

three times a week, but then maybe

they're the type of employee that gets a

lot more work done at home. Okay? And so

the flexibility here is medium or

moderate and I think is probably more

realistic for most organizations and

individuals than an all or nothing

approach. The next factor that we're

looking at is collaboration. Remote work

requires strong digital communication

tools, potential for time zone

challenges as well. So you need to make

sure that your tech stack and your

standard operating procedure for

communication is very clearly

articulated to the team. If you expect

people to be messaging back and forth

constantly all day long in Slack, you

need to make sure that they know that.

If you require that people hop on Zoom

calls, like that needs to be very clear.

The amount of collaboration that happens

by accident in a remote environment is

very minimal. Every once in a while, you

get blessed with that that moment where

you're on a Zoom call talking about one

thing and then it changes and evolves

into a big project or whatever, but for

the most part, you don't get those happy

accidents. Now, for collaboration in

person, this is far easier. Uh, in my

opinion, there's a lot of real-time

collaboration that occurs. If we're

talking about a creative director giving

notes to an editor, it's so much

different providing notes on frame.io

and and giving a couple of notes here

and there versus sitting down with the

editor and being like, "What if we did

this?" And then the editor chimes in on

that. And they feed each other and they

ladder up to a way better idea than

probably what they would have landed on

using just a Frame or some sort of

digital service like that. Now, don't

get me wrong, we use Frame. I love

Frame. I use it with all of our

partners. I've used it for years and I

think it's a very effective tool and

better than 99% of alternatives if

you're not in person. But there is a

beauty of having the team working

together on the ground in person. Being

able to real time go back and forth on

potential solves and solutions. Again,

what you'll notice with hybrid is this

is a balanced approach. depending on how

many days you have this individual

coming into the office is going to be

the amount of time that they get those

happy accidents, those random

occurrences where collaboration takes

place that was not planned. But it does

also give them the ability to be a

little bit more focused at home and have

less distraction. Collaboration can be a

big benefit, but it can also be a

detractor of productivity, which brings

us to the next factor, which is

productivity. Now productivity for uh at

home or remote work varies. This is very

dependent on the individual. I would say

when I look at the teams that I've ran,

half of the people fall into the camp of

they are highly effective at home. They

have a lot of agency. They know how to

own their own and they're mature

enough to be able to manage their time

effectively and not fall into the trap

of putting on Netflix and getting into

their PJs or, you know, taking 2 hours

out of the middle of their day to cook a

crazy lunch or some I know those

are a lot of the fears that a lot of

CEOs and founders have uh for remote

workers. Now, productivity for in-person

work, I actually believe it's the exact

same answer. So, it varies depending on

the individual. Some people thrive in an

environment where they are away from

their home and they know, "I'm in the

office. This is my working time."

However, there are a lot of individuals

that have the gift of gab and they love

to talk and they get really chatty when

they're around their co-workers. And

actually, I fall into this category. I

personally get a lot more work done when

I work from home and do a deep work

session versus trying to do the same

deep work in an office. even if I have

my own cubicle or my own

office, you know, the roles that I've

had over the years tend to be roles

where a lot of people want my input on

things. And so I remember like Vayner

Media for example, loved the work

environment there. It was super cool. It

was an open floor plan and everything,

but the downside to it, like the benefit

was like I could turn over to Dkirk or

to Drock or anybody on the team and be

like, "Hey, do you want to come check

this out? Let's jam on it." The downside

was when I was deep in an edit, anybody

could do that to me and they could just

tap my shoulder whenever and there's no

like do not disturb, you know, mode on

when you're in person. And so I actually

find that half of the individuals that

I've worked with are not very effective

in office. They don't have enough

discipline to not engage in random

conversations here and there. And one

thing I'll say is even if they are

ideulating on a piece of content or

they're working on it, sometimes that's

beneficial, but sometimes that's not

what the priority is right now. If they

have an edit that's due tomorrow and

they're sitting there talking with the

team about a video we're going to film

in two weeks, that's not the best use of

their time. Okay? And so again, I think

this varies and depends on the

individual. So that's why again, I like

a hybrid approach here because you can

actually build a team where you reverse

engineer the individual. Maybe some

people need three days, four days

working from home and only come into the

office one or two days a week, while

others maybe it's like, no, they need to

be in five days a week. And you mutually

agree upon that because they're

self-aware and know, yeah, I don't I

don't do a good job at home. Like I end

up just like around, turning the

TV on or cleaning my house or whatever.

I do a lot of home activities when I'm

at home. So ultimately, I think

especially on the productivity side, you

need to reverse engineer the individual.

Now I understand there are some of you

that are in bigger organizations and

you're about to build a creative team

and they have their way of operating and

you don't have the ability to be

flexible there then okay cool like

borrow my life philosophy which is

whatever you are given you will turn to

your advantage okay so if you do need to

be in person 24/7 okay cool make it your

advantage you know organize a morning

breakfast once a week where you and the

team have pancakes and coffee and you

jam on different things you've observed

online that maybe could apply to the

content you're making or whatever. Or if

you have to be remote and you can't be

in person, okay, cool. Maybe what you do

is you create a happy hour on Fridays or

Thursdays. Not Fridays, cuz nobody wants

to do a happy hour on Friday

with their co-workers. They want to go

out with their homies. But on Thursday,

maybe you end the day with like an hour

session where you all have cocktails or,

you know, you drink sodas, whatever the

deal is, kombucha if you're in

Bellingham, Washington, uh or Portland,

Oregon. And like maybe you do that and

you all jam and maybe sometimes you're

talking about work stuff, maybe

sometimes you're just talking about

life. I think that you can always try to

take the benefits from the opposite

operation. So if you're in person, you

can take the benefits from remote or if

you're remote, you can try and take the

benefits from in person and replicate

them in your own way. Now again, this is

another situation where hybrid is the

best move in my opinion. That's what I

like to run. The next factor we're going

to take into account here is cost,

right? I mean, ultimately, we got

limited budgets and and some of us have

more limited budgets than others. And

so, this is a a factor that I think is

probably top of mind for a lot of

individuals. And when it comes to remote

work, this is probably the most cost

effective. Okay? You save on office

space. You save on like the employees

save on commuting expenses. You don't

have to have relocation costs if you're

a fully remote operation. And you know,

maybe you, the founder, are based in New

York City. You can hire somebody in

Florida and California, and Kansas,

wherever, and they're not going to have

to move to New York City, and so you

don't have to pay an egregious

relocation package. Okay? So, you save a

lot of cost there. Now, for the office

in person, this is the highest cost

option here. you're going to have to pay

for an office, whether you're buying it

outright or you're renting. That's going

to be a pretty high overhead every

month. You also have utilities. And then

typically nowadays, I mean, I think this

is a great thing, but tougher for small

businesses, you know, with the rise of

Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, all

these cool in-person offices. Everyone's

aware that like companies can provide

cereal and and fruit and coffee and all

these, you know, kombucha, beer on tap,

cold brew, all of this And so more

and more employees are starting to

expect some perks for being in the

office, okay? Like at the very least

granola bars and, you know, sodas or

something like that in the fridge. And

so you incur not only the cost of your

rent or your mortgage, you have

utilities and you have the cost of some

perks that you're going to probably need

to provide. Now, in the beginning, is

this absolutely necessary? No. Of

course, there's going to be people that

argue in the comments about like, you

know, people have gotten soft. They need

doesn't matter. It's more expensive to

be in person for sure. Hybrid's

funny on cost. It's actually, I think,

the maybe only or one of the only

scenarios where hybrid is a very bad

option cuz you kind of get

right? You're paying for an office. You

incur the cost of having this space. And

if it's hybrid, you need to have space

available for the remote workers to come

in, but they're not in all the time. So,

you're paying for space that's not

getting used all the time. So, you have

free empty space that you're not

monetizing. That kind of sucks. This is

the detractor in my opinion to the

hybrid model, which I have been very

clearly in favor of up until this point.

So, if cost is your major factor, it's

your number one factor, then hybrid

might not be for you right now. That

might be something that you can aspire

to. But maybe if cost is your number one

priority, you're probably going to want

to go remote. Now, the next factor that

we're looking at is talent pool. What

individuals do you have access to? And

when you are fully remote, you have

access to the whole world. You literally

could hire anybody anywhere at any time.

That opens up the door for not only very

impressive, highly skilled talent, but

also very impressive, highly skilled

talent at a reduced cost. Think about it

this way. a very very talented editor, a

10 out of 10 in LA versus a 10 out of 10

editor, same exact skill set living in

Kansas City. Very different. I mean,

honestly, the difference between a New

York City or LA editor that it's a 10

out of 10 and a Las Vegas editor is very

different. And so, if you are a remote

team, you can hire highly talented. If

you're based in LA, you don't have to

hire LA editors for the LA Premium. you

do have the flexibility to get away with

not having to bring those individuals.

You also get access to talent that is

literally across the world.

Okay? And so, like, if you're starting

to make international content and stuff

that you're going global with, you have

access to a talent pool that's going to

understand the nuances of those new

cultures that maybe you don't get. This

allows your talent pool to go from your

local market to the entire world. If you

are fully in office, however, you really

limit your talent pool. If you're based

in Los Angeles or New York City, your

talent pool is going to be fine. You're

you're not going to have an issue,

especially when it comes to creatives.

Like those are the hubs where the most

amount of creatives are. But if you find

yourself in like Chattanooga, Tennessee

or El Paso, Texas, yeah, you might not

have quite the same access to talent

that those folks in LA and NYC have.

This becomes a major constraint. You are

all of a sudden limited to people in

your local area or people that are

willing to relocate. And that's going to

drive your cost up because more than

likely if you're going to bring somebody

from LA to El Paso, Texas, you're

probably going to have to pay them a

premium because you're compensating them

for a massive lifestyle change and

literally them missing out on the

lifestyle and opportunities that come

from being in LA. The amount of

opportunities that pop up for a video

editor in Los Angeles are absurd. You

can be at a coffee shop editing a video

and have five different people walk up

to you and talk to you about your work.

And that's networking at scale. And so

if you move to El Paso, you know,

nothing against El Paso. I love El Paso.

I've been there once. If you live in El

Paso, I almost guarantee if you're in a

in a coffee shop editing, you're

not going to have five different

opportunities potentially pop up like

you would in a New York City or a Los

Angeles. you really limit your talent

pool when you are local, especially if

you are local in a non- major market.

Now, the hybrid model is a little bit

better than the local. So, you can kind

of use it as like a benefit that you you

place in front of the candidate. Yes,

you do have to relocate, but you're not

going to have to be in office all the

time. You can be remote. And so, maybe

there's a scenario where they could be

remote and go back to the town they're

from and work remotely for 4 days a

week. So, they could be in office 3 days

a week and then they could go travel for

four. This provides a lot more

flexibility for the employee which does

make the relocation offer a little bit

more palatable from my experience. The

next factor is culture and engagement.

And I think you guys can probably

already imagine where I'm going with

this. Remote is very hard to build

culture and to drive engagement within

your team. There's a huge difference

when I say, "Hey, Trevor, what do you

think of this idea?" when he's right in

front of me versus if I send it on

Slack. He might be deep in work. He

might be twiddling his thumbs,

around, doing nothing. It might take him

an hour to respond, right? And so speed,

engagement, and culture are much slower.

It's not impossible. You can absolutely

build a very powerful culture remotely,

but it just takes more time and requires

far more intentionality. I I believe

that if you are going to go the remote

route, be very very intentional with

your check-ins. send a morning check-in

on Slack seeing how the team's doing. Is

there anything that I can help with? Are

there any roadblocks that I can bulldoze

through for you? Is there any clarity

that I can provide you? How are you

feeling? Are you feeling healthy? Are

you sick? Can I send you juice? Like

anything like that that can help you

expedite building the company and team

culture. The other thing that you can

do, now this is uh a cost, this is a

higher investment, but if you have the

budget to, one thing I found very

effective is if you do have a remote

team, you can create a in-person meetup.

Okay? And this is a one-time event or

maybe it's a quarterly event uh that

takes place where you fly the team into

one spot and you all hang out. What I

would recommend if you're going to do

that is make it a combination of fun and

work. It shouldn't just all be fun and

around, but it shouldn't all

just be work, too. You want to give the

employees the opportunity to do what

they can't do, right? When you are in

person, which I'll touch on in a second,

one really cool thing that does happen

is some employees are like, "Hey, you

want to go grab dinner? Like, we're

working late. Let's go grab beers. Let's

go jam." And they develop a closer,

tight-knit relationship, and that has a

massive ripple effect throughout your

team. The closer they are, the better

they're going to communicate. the more

they're going to understand each other,

the less room there is for

misunderstandings and weird drama and

conflict. Now, like I was saying, for

the inerson, I think this is the easiest

method for building culture. But there

are some downsides to it. One, there's a

lot of young people that are in the

workforce now that entered the workforce

after or during co and so they've never

been in person and so they have no idea

how to hold themselves, how to behave

maturely. And so you do sometimes,

especially I've noticed on creative

teams or younger teams, you run into

scenarios where maybe there's a little

bit more drama that's going to pop up.

You might have to deal with a little bit

more interpersonal training and

education on how we conduct ourselves.

Just like you get so much benefit from

the high frequency, high touch, lots of

contact, as we know, if we spend an

entire weekend with our significant

other, by the end of that weekend, we

might be a little bit more likely to get

in an argument. The same thing happens

with teams. If you spend all day every

day with each other, you might start

getting a little irritated and maybe

make a sly comment and that can

snowball. And so that that's one thing

that I would caution you to be aware of

is if you are building a team that is

utilizing a lot younger talent and more

junior individuals that are earlier in

their career, you are going to have to

spend a little bit more time educating

them on how to conduct themselves. Now,

hybrid is a beautiful blend of the two,

right? You get the in-person dynamic

where you're able to scale culture

quicker, right? You're able to reinforce

good behaviors and correct bad ones a

lot faster, but you also get the benefit

of maybe not everybody is in the office

every single day and so they're not all

just chatting around a table every

single day as well. And so you get the

best of both worlds. You get expedited

culture, strength of culture, but also

you get to retain productivity that

maybe some teams lose by always being in

person together. The beauty of having a

team that all love each other and get

along really well and love to chat and

work on is well, they work really

well together and they get a lot done.

The downside is is maybe they end up

falling out of productivity a little bit

because they're chatting too much.

Personally, I would actually prefer, as

a side note, for that to be my problem

than the alternative. I'd rather that

they they want to talk to each other

versus them not wanting to talk to each

other. So ultimately, I think what we

have here is good, better, best. I

personally like in person a lot. I I

think that there are more benefits to in

person than remote for the company, but

that's one-sided. I think for a lot of

individuals, remote work is better. I

don't like to only do things in my

benefit. I want to have a mutual

exchange of benefit. And that's where I

like hybrid. I think hybrid is the best

version if you can afford it. If you

have the ability to pay for an office

that is not always being used and you

won't get pissed when people

aren't always in there, then hybrid is

the way to go. You get the best of both

worlds. You get to scale culture,

correct bad behaviors, reinforce good

ones. You get to do fun activities with

the team. you get to know them better

because you get the, you know, water

cooler talk where you get to learn

something about somebody that you had no

clue that they were interested in. And

maybe that's something that you can

start to pour into. Maybe you find out

that somebody on your team loves making

music. Maybe you have a video coming up

that you want an original track to and

so they actually go home and work on

that as a project. Okay, cool. Probably

would have never discovered that over

Zoom. But if you are at a stage where

you can't afford an office, then I truly

believe you can absolutely build a

powerful strong team remotely. I've done

it. I've literally had a team of 14

people all remote before. I know that it

is possible. It is a challenge and you

have to be far more intentional and

methodical with how you approach it. So

to recap, hybrid in my opinion is the

best. Then the next two, I'm just going

to say it. In person is best for the

company. remote is best for the

employee. And so you have to determine

what factors here are most important to

you. So the sheet that you have that

you've downloaded, what I want you to do

is order in priority what are the

factors that are most important to you

right now. And that becomes your

decision-making framework. That's how

you determine whether you're going to go

in person, remote, or hybrid. So here

are my final thoughts on building your

team. Again, I think this is arguably

the most important part of this entire

course. One, a strong team is not just

about skill. It's about culture,

alignment, growth, and trust. Two,

define and reinforce your core values

daily. Right? If if good branding is an

intentional pairing of relevant things

done consistently, well, pair yourself

and your organization with your core

values consistently and then the team

will inherently associate the two.

Branding works externally and internally

just as effectively. Number three,

please be radically transparent. Just

like trust begets trust, transparency

begets transparency. You want your team

to be transparent with you about the

problems that are occurring, right? You

don't want them secretly dealing with a

bunch of different problems that you

have no idea about and then one day it

blows up in your face. Well, they're not

going to be open and vulnerable with you

if you're not open and vulnerable with

them. Number four, make growth a

priority. Your team is going to see

themselves on your team a lot longer if

they see a long road ahead of growth. If

they think that they're probably going

to be capped out on their growth within

the next 3 months, guess what they're

spending their time doing right now?

Posting on LinkedIn and looking at

potential other opportunities because

they want to move the on. Number

five, the most important one to me and

how I strive to always lead. Lead with

empathy. Your team will respond with

empathy back. So when you up as the

leader, they will be empathetic towards

you rather than holding it against you.

When a mistake occurs, often times it's

not intentional. They're not trying to

ruin your brand. They're not trying to

up the process or lose the company

money. Be empathetic to all that they

have going on. A lot of times these

people have lives outside of their job.

Crazy, crazy concept. and their lives

outside of the job affect their job. I

truly believe that if you show up on a

daily basis as an empathetic leader,

your team is going to stick with you and

fight for you and show up for you in a

way that you could never imagine. Lead

your team with empathy, not fear. If you

lead your team with empathy rather than

fear, creativity will flourish rather

than be stifled. Culture isn't created

in the words that you say. It's created

in the actions that you choose to do

every single day. If you're intentional

about it, you won't just have employees.

You'll have a team that's fully locked

in and ready to build something much

bigger than the

individual. All right, y'all. We have

gotten to the final section. We've gone

over brand. We've gone over content. And

we've gone over building out your team.

And we are at the final piece of the

puzzle, which is monetize. And we're

going to start with trust before

transactions. Now, most people make the

mistake of trying to monetize too early.

They push offers before trust is built

and then they wonder why no one buys.

The reality is trust is the currency

that preeds the transaction. Now, before

we dive in, I want to just say I

understand this position to be in. Last

night after filming for a full 12-hour

day, Trevor and I were sitting at the

Airbnb and we were actually debating and

going back and forth just looking at

what could we charge for this course and

how many people do we think we could buy

and we were running the numbers and I

will tell you it is unbelievably

tempting. So, I want to empathize with

you if you are in a position where maybe

you did try to monetize too early. Maybe

you did try and get transactions before

you built trust. I understand it

completely. Maybe you're in the position

right now where you're building your

brand and you haven't made any asks, but

you're still early in the process and

you're like, "Fuck, I really want to

make a little bit of money off of this."

I get it. And off top, we got bills to

pay and mouths to feed. So, if that is

the case, then you got to do what you

got to do. What I'm about to walk

through is the best case scenario. But I

understand there are realities that we

live in, and so you have to do what you

got to do and take care of your family.

But with that, before you ever try to

monetize, I believe that your brand

should do these three things. Provide an

unbelievable amount of value upfront.

Your audience should feel like they're

winning and getting so much value before

they ever even spend a dollar. Number

two is demonstrate credibility and

expertise. You need to become the go-to

authority in your industry. And thirdly,

establish a relationship with your

audience. Engagement actually matters.

If people feel like they know you, sales

become effortless. You're not having to

push, convince, inject all this scarcity

and urgency, they trust you. They

believe that what you are offering is of

actual value because what you've offered

for free has been worth more than what

they've invested. And so this leads us

to defining your monetization model.

Now, to be clear, I don't believe that

all brands should monetize the same.

Your monetization strategy should line

up with your strengths, what you're

providing, the value that you bring in

your content, and more importantly, what

your audience actually needs. So, here

are five primary paths that you can take

with your monetization model. Number one

is services. Think agency life, think

consulting, think coaching. This is

ideal for hightouch direct impact with

your clients. You'll find this works

well if you have deep expertise and

people are already asking for your

advice. Number two is products. This is

digital or physical. Some examples of

digital are ebooks, templates,

playbooks, courses. One thing to note

here is these are also very high margin

and so your profitability will be

through the roof if you do this

correctly. Now, a couple examples for

physical are like a physical book or you

could sell apparel. There's many

different versions of this, but you're

going to find that digital is higher

margins. And so, I would encourage you

to explore this and probably lean into

more digital products earlier on so that

you're able to scale. Number three is

affiliates and sponsorships. If you've

put the effort into building the trust,

you're going to be able to monetize

through very intentional and strategic

partnerships with people that align with

your brand. Now, what I would recommend

you do is don't shill out tools and

programs or software that you don't

actually use. Make sure that you're

always pushing stuff that you actually

actually use and believe in. Your brand

is your most valuable asset. And if you

end up pushing out a bunch of products

that you don't believe in or use and

that are actually garbage for your

community, that pairing done

consistently will create a bad brand

effect for you. people will start to

associate you with the shitty product.

So, make sure whatever you are pushing

or promoting is something that you truly

believe in and you know will be valuable

for your audience. Number four is

community and memberships. This can

create recurring revenue for you via

exclusive content, masterminds, online

groups, or even paid newsletters. The

list goes on and on. There's many

different options for you in this realm.

And the beauty of this is it's a great

hub for your super fans and for you to

go deeper with those fans and build a

tighter connection and build greater

loyalty with that audience. And number

five is ads and content monetization.

This looks like YouTube ad revenue,

podcast sponsorships or even newsletter

ads. This is a very popular route to go,

but what I would encourage you to do is

pair this with one of the other

monetization models. Typically, in the

beginning, you're not going to be

earning that much in sponsorships or ad

revenue, but it is a nice thing to be

able to potentially cover costs of

production for your content. This is

especially effective for the hightra

long-term brand. So, like I said in the

beginning, you're not going to see much

traction on this monetization model.

This is kind of like a nice to have or

an add-on to an already established,

more effective and consistent

monetization model. Now, a pro tip here

is if you're not sure where to start, I

would encourage you to look at your

email and your DMs and your comments.

More than likely, you can see what your

audience is already asking for and then

you can serve them what they already

have identified they need. This will

make it a lot easier to get conversions

to occur. Next is share the knowledge,

sell the execution. If you give away

value freely, people will still pay for

the help. A lot of people, and I I

completely understand why, fear sharing

way too much of their information for

free. They think, "If I share everything

I know, why would anybody ever pay me?"

But the reality is is the more value you

give, the more demand you create. The

more value you give, the more trust you

build. The more trust you have, the more

likely someone is to convert. So, here's

the formula. Share the knowledge, sell

the execution. Your best content should

be so valuable that people feel

compelled to act. But then when they go

to act, they realize that the execution

is overwhelming and they might not have

the tools, resources or knowledge to

implement what you have told them to do.

This is where the monetization comes

into play. And as an example, I have

modified my Harley-Davidsons like an

insane amount. One of my bikes, it's a

Harley-Davidson Road King special. And I

have done so much to it, you wouldn't

even recognize it as a Road King. Now,

when I went to upgrade my exhaust pipe,

for example, I watched probably a

hundred different videos on YouTube on

how to change the exhaust pipe. I just

wanted to have the knowledge. I wanted

to see what kind of pipes that I should

choose between, what the best one was

for my model. I consumed enough content

to know exactly what to do. Now, if you

know me, you know I'm not very

mechanically inclined, like at all. And

so in watching it, what it actually

showed me was this is far too

complicated and way too expensive of a

vehicle for me to up. So what am I

going to do? I'm going to go to the

Harley-Davidson dealership that put

content out for free showing me how I

could go about doing that. And that's

what I did. I ended up going and paying

Harley to install the pipe. I didn't do

it myself. And so they gave me all the

knowledge and then they sold the

execution. Another example is maybe you

give away a framework that helps people

land their first client. The knowledge

is free but the execution requires

additional guidance templates. That is

what you sell. The execution of the

knowledge. So the takeaway here is that

the knowledge is free but you charge for

the execution. And now we're going to

build your offer stack. A oneizefits-all

approach definitely will not work. We

need something that is custom and

tailored to each of us and what we are

providing to the marketplace. Now, the

best brands have multiple revenue

streams. But guess what? They didn't

start that way. Start with one offer,

refine it, and then begin to expand.

Don't start with five different offers.

You're going to confuse your audience.

Make it very simple. Make it something

you can track and something that you can

refine over time before you go about

expanding. So, here's a simple offer

progression. One, you put out free

content. This builds trust and

awareness. Two, create a lead magnet.

Think miniourse, SOP, checklist,

playbook. This allows you to capture

emails and phone numbers so that you're

not just beholden to the algorithms of

these platforms serving your content,

but you have a direct line of access to

your customers. Number three is you have

your low ticket offer. This is usually

somewhere between $10 and $100. Think

ebooks, mini courses, or templates. And

what this does is it removes the barrier

of entry. Number four is a mid-t offer.

Now, this is anywhere from $500 to

$5,000. I know that's a wide range, but

it depends on what you're offering.

Think group coaching, memberships to

your community, or even really in-depth

courses. These are for your highly

committed buyers. And lastly, number

five is your high ticket offer. Think

$10,000 plus. This is your one-on-one

consulting, your agency services, or any

done for you service that you can

provide. And these are your very high

ROI clients. Most successful brands

don't start with their high ticket offer

first. They establish trust and build

awareness before ever offering that to

the marketplace. There are some unique

scenarios where maybe you have demand

before you ever start making public

content. But that is very very rare and

the majority of you consuming this if

you're in the early stages, you are not

at that point yet. You need to build

more trust with your audience and get

more people to be aware of who you are

and what you offer before bringing a

high ticket offer into the marketplace.

Next, we're going to let our content do

the selling for us. Sales should feel

natural, not forced. People hate feeling

sold to, but they love buying from

someone they trust. That's why your

brand should bridge the gap between

value and monetization. So, how do we do

this? Well, here is how you can let your

content sell for you. One, teach a

valuable lesson and maybe end it with a

soft CTA. Number two is share client

success stories. Showcase how your offer

helped them improve. Number three,

document your process. Show the behind

the scenes of what you do and what you

offer. Number four, address common

objections. Answer the unspoken concerns

that are holding people back. Number

five, use lead magnets to capture data.

Offer something valuable like a

checklist, a playbook, a miniourse, or a

full in-depth course in exchange for an

email so that you have direct access to

your customers. Here's an example.

Instead of saying, "Buy my ebook on

personal branding," try, "I helped John

go from 0 to 10k followers in 4 and 1/2

months using this exact strategy." If

you want the full system, I break it

down in my ebook. There's a link in my

bio. Do you see the difference there?

It's far more compelling if you share

the results that you are getting for

your clients and for your customers than

if you're just encouraging people to go

buy the book based on what it is. And

finally, I'm sure you've probably gotten

this theme throughout. Play the long

game. We want to monetize without losing

trust. A lot of people approach

monetization backwards. They think about

how to make money first, then build

content to try and drive sales. But the

brands that actually win, they're not

chasing short-term revenue. They're

building long-term trust. If you end up

doing this right, your audience isn't

going to just buy from you once. They

will keep coming back. And this is how

you build a brand that doesn't just make

money, it stands the test of time. So

here is how we are going to execute this

strategy. Number one is to deliver so

much value that people feel guilty not

buying. Instead of following what

everyone else in the industry is doing,

give away your best insights for free.

Don't do the watered down version, not

some teaser of what they can then go and

purchase. You want to give the actual

frameworks, strategies, and knowledge

that people would traditionally be

paying for. Ultimately, the reaction

that we want to build within our

audience is if this is what they're

giving away for free, what the are

they charging for? When your free

content drives real results, your

audience isn't just going to be open to

buying from you. they're going to feel

compelled to buy from you. Number two is

build a system where people continue to

come back. Create a recurring content

format. I'm talking like challenges,

weekly breakdowns, anything that gets

your audience to keep returning. You

also want to make sure that your content

is easy to find and easy to binge. Put

together playlists. Categorize it by

topic. Make sure it's easy for your

audience to consume this highly valuable

free content you're putting out. The

goal is to focus on long-term retention.

How can we keep people engaged over

months, not just days? Rather than

thinking about a one-hit viral video,

think more like Netflix, a series that

you continue to come back to day after

day, month after month. And number

three, and this is the most important

one, protect your reputation at all

costs. It is way harder to rebuild trust

than it is to maintain trust. Every

short-term cash grab that you do comes

with a significant long-term cost. You

need to be obsessive with who and what

you pair your brand with because these

are the associations that your audience

is going to make when they hear of your

brand. A great question that I would

encourage you to ask yourself before you

make any moves for a monetization play

are, will this increase trust with my

audience or decrease trust? Will this

make my audience trust me more or trust

me less? And if the answer is that it's

less, I promise you it is not worth it.

Period. To summarize, obviously

monetization is extremely important. We

have to make money in order to pay our

bills, in order to be able to fund

projects like this, for example. But the

reality is is if you try to make that

play too early, you're going to burn

your audience and degrade trust. You

need to make sure that you establish

immense amount of trust before you start

monetizing your audience. This is going

to make that monetization season, that

play, so much easier for you and will

allow you to continue to monetize down

the road. The ones who are trying to

make a short-term cash grab, what

they're doing is feeding themselves

today, but what they don't realize is

they're making it difficult to feed

themselves tomorrow. What you want to do

is build a brand that allows you to

continue to feed yourself day after day

after day. But this only comes when you

establish trust

first. All right, that is exactly what I

would do if I were building a brand from

scratch. I hope you got a lot of value

out of this and I hope you plan on

taking action. So, in the spirit of

taking action, please make sure that you

download all the playbooks that we've

given you throughout this entire course.

It is my only goal that you not only

consume this, but that you actually take

action. That's what makes this whole

time that you've invested worth it. It's

pretty wild how much we were able to

cover. So, here's a quick refresher to

remind you of every little thing that we

went through. First, we started with

what brand is and isn't. Then, we went

to defining your brand, then positioning

your brand. Then, we went to picking

your topics, choosing your content

medium, choosing the right platforms,

determining your posting cadence,

utilizing storytelling in your content,

having your community drive your

content. Then we went to scaling your

content, creating space for

experimentation with content hackathons,

why your team is everything, defining

your needs before hiring, streamlining

your hiring process, hiring for culture,

training for skills, starting lean,

growing intentionally, full-time

employees versus contractors and

agencies, onboarding your team properly,

developing and retaining your high

performing team. Building a strong team

culture, building trust before you

transact. defining your monetization

model, sharing the knowledge, selling

the execution, building your offer

stack, letting your content do the

selling, tracking and scaling, and last

but not least, playing the long game.

Now, like I said, it's your turn to

execute. But for some of you, you may

look at this entire course and be like,

"Holy this is way too much for me

and my team to be able to execute

alone." And that's where my team, Rston,

is here to help. We provide the

direction and guidance along the way to

help you take this plan and build a

strategy that drives real results and

leads to actual brand scale. And so if

you are interested in potentially

partnering with us, you can go to caleb

rston.com, hit the application button,

and see if you qualify to be one of our

partners. We would be incredibly stoked

to partner with you and help you scale

your brand. Now, the reality is is the

majority of you watching this, we will

never have the opportunity to partner

with. And that's okay. That's why we

made this course completely free for

you. My goal is to help you, whether we

ever work together or not, scale your

brand and see the results and create the

life and the company and the business

and whatever you're trying to build that

you have dreamed of. If you got value

out of it, consider maybe sending it to

your team on Slack or texting it to a

friend that you know is trying to build

their brand. It's free and available for

anyone. Share it with anyone you think

would get value out of it. And last but

not least, if you made it this far,

thank you. My team and I put an

incredible amount of effort into this

project and it's just our second video

that we've put out and I can't tell you

how much your attention means to me. I

know this was a very long piece of

content here. And so you dedicating your

time, there's a lot of different things

that you could spend your time on. And

the fact that you spent it here with me,

I'll never be able to explain to you how

much that means. So, I just want to say

from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Thank you for paying attention, for

consuming, and thank you for taking

action on this. Please let me know how

it goes. Keep me updated. I want to hear

about how your brand is scaling. And

with that, that is how to build a brand.

Thank you so much.